Just one day after Ed Miliband was made Foreign Secretary we heard in the Telegraph that the White House is upset about the appointment, and even warned against it. Donald Trump is apparently unimpressed by Miliband’s role in blocking North Sea oil drilling.
Miliband has also railed against Trump in the past, calling him a ‘racist, misogynistic self-confessed groper’ on the BBC’s World at One in 2016, as an example – but in fairness his predecessor David Lammy called Trump ‘beneath contempt’ before he became foreign secretary.
Trump can forgive and forget – so long as his interlocutor is willing to forget their own pride. Miliband could bend the knee, but there is also some appetite to confront Trump. Due to his rhetoric on Greenland, tariffs and the Iran disaster Trump is even more unpopular with British voters than he was at the start of his Presidency. In January last year 34 per cent of Brits polled by YouGov had a positive view of Trump. As of this month that number is 19 per cent. Once the cost of living pressures from the ongoing interruption of shipping through Hormuz begin to mount further towards the end of the year this may well significantly worsen.
It is rumoured that Burnham is considering a public showdown with Trump, with Labour’s polling suggesting this would go down very well with the electorate. The party sees parallels with Mark Carney, who transformed the Canadian Liberals’ electoral fortunes in 2025 when he took over from the unpopular Justin Trudeau and entered into a war of words with President Trump.
