Welcome to Monday’s Washington Secrets, where the big question is how we will get through the next four years waiting for the next World Cup. In the meantime, we run the rule over Britain’s new prime minister, and suggest that he is already in good shape to manage the relationship between London and Washington. Plus, why Rep. Russell Fry’s Senate campaign will need a outside consultant (preferably ones who aren’t pedophiles). And some World Cup odds and ends.
Andy Burnham may be Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, but he faces a diplomatic dilemma familiar to most of his predecessors: managing the relationship with a prickly, unpredictable American president.
“It’s about being yourself, isn’t it?” he told Gary Lineker, a former England soccer player in a podcast interview last week.
Yet being themselves has been something of a problem for senior figures from his Labour Party, who love nothing more than displaying their leftist credentials by beating up on Donald Trump.
So when Peter Mandelson was named Britain’s (ultimately short-lived) ambassador to Washington, he had to eat humble pie in an interview with Fox News Digital, disowning past comments that Trump was “little short of a white nationalist.”
When David Lammy was appointed British Foreign Secretary, he had to deal with an old interview in which he called Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath.” That was “old news,” he said when he became the nation’s top diplomat.
Burnham became prime minister on Monday after being invited by King Charles III to form a government.
News organizations on both sides of the Atlantic have already trawled through their files to find embarrassing quotes. The best one comes from his campaign last month to win election to the House of Commons.
“The path we’re on, if we are not careful, is a path towards the politics of the United States of America,” he said. The danger was “a polarized, poisonous politics where people in communities don’t work together anymore.”
In an interview last year, he linked Trump with Liz Truss, the Conservative prime minister who managed just 49 days in office, and the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe.
“I think we now have to have a real debate about what that means and the instability that Liz Truss brought to Britain, I think Trump is bringing to the U.S. and the world,” he said.
Notice anything? It’s not that bad, is it?
The point is that Burnham, of all people, was well-placed to lay into Trump. The U.S. president is not popular in the United Kingdom, and Burnham has built his brand on the idea that he says it as he sees it.
The governing Labour Party views his plainspoken image as a much better way to connect with disenchanted voters, compared with Sir Keir Starmer’s robotic, lawyerly approach. So it would have been no surprise to see Burnham, as mayor of Manchester, a city in northern England, pander to his domestic base by letting rip.
Instead, his comments have been rooted in context. While not always complimentary, he has been careful to describe Trump as part of a bigger ecosystem, the product of our times and of disillusioned, disenfranchised voters.
In 2024, Burnham wrote in a book he co-authored: “Whether we like it or not, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage have been effective in connecting with people who feel politicians have neglected the place where they live.”
Had he always been preparing for this moment, calculating that one day he might have to work with the American president?
To find out, Secrets spoke with Ben Judah, who was a special adviser to Lammy until earlier this year. He said Burnham had been selling Manchester on the world stage for years.
“Travelling in the Gulf, meeting their leadership with David Lammy when he was Foreign Secretary I was struck how warmly they felt towards him and Manchester, a place where the UAE and Qatar in particular have sunk billions,” Judah said.
“He’s already an experienced economic diplomat. Expect that to inform his approach to Trump and all other tricky partners.”
There are already signs that Burnham has a strategy for dealing with Trump.
Over the weekend, the incoming PM’s team briefed that he was ready to issue new drilling licenses for oil and gas in the North Sea. The issue is controversial in Britain but popular with one important person: Trump, who repeatedly bashed Starmer for refusing new licenses. And on Sunday, he posted that residents of Aberdeen, Scotland’s oil capital, will be “dancing in the streets.”
And the new PM had another trick up his sleeve. He telephoned the president within an hour of taking office, Secrets is told, and invited the president to Manchester for the G20 summit next year, ensuring what could be their first meeting will be on his home turf. Smart.
Russell Fry faces questions about link to pedophile
Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC) is going to need new consultants to work with his campaign after announcing that he is running to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the Senate.
And he can expect questions about his relationship with former state Rep. RJ May, who was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison in January after distributing hundreds of images of child sex abuse material.
The videos included toddlers depicted in physical pain and extreme and humiliating sexual abuse, according to the Department of Justice. At the sentencing, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie noted that the sentence was particularly lengthy because May’s content was the most severe the court had seen.
What does this have to do with Fry? His campaign paid almost $200,000 from October 2021 to September 2023 to May’s firm, Ivory Tusk Consulting, for fundraising, campaign, marketing, and direct mail services, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The filings show that Fry was the firm’s only federal client. Yet oddly, the congressman has yet to publicly condemn or even comment on the fact that his associate turned out to be a pedophile.
Secrets hopes that he does better than Monday morning, when his campaign and House office failed to respond to our questions.
Caption of the day
It cannot have been the outcome that Trump wanted. He threatened to cut trade and tourism to Spain, calling the country a “terrible partner” due to its low defense spending and refusal to allow U.S. military bases on its soil to be used for strikes on Iran.
But there he was, handing out gold medals to the nation’s victorious soccer players after their impressive victory over Argentina’s cheats and thugs.
He managed to make the most of it. After delivering the trophy to the team’s captain, Trump opted not to take the short route off the podium, walking past the Spanish players to take up a place in the front row for the photographs.
The president of FIFA took his cue to hurry across the stage in an effort to coax Trump out of the way. The Guardian captioned its photo in fine style: “Gianni Infantino carefully explains to Donald Trump that he is not part of the Spanish national team.”
Quote of the day
Secrets imagines that Shakira must be devastated. And spare a thought for the Muppet band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, who at least brought an appropriate note of absurdity.
But Wayne Rooney, former England soccer striker, ex-DC United coach and one of the BBC’s top pundits, spoke for many when asked what he made of the World Cup halftime show.
“I like a lot of them artists but I thought it was crap,” he said.
Quite so. The entertainment comes during the match, not during halftime.
Lunchtime reading
JD Vance picks a lane — and a fight: Peter Laffin suggests that the vice president has picked a difficult path to winning his party’s 2028 nomination.
We went to a yacht party for the most pro-deportation people in DC: “There’s a fleet of Western civilization. We’re the flagship for that fleet,” said former GOP Rep. Steve King. “And if they can sink us, the entire civilization goes down.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
