Domestic policy has dominated coverage of Andy Burnham’s rise to the Labour leadership — devolution, business rates, Number 10 North. Far less attention has gone to a question that will land on his desk within days of entering Downing Street: how does he handle a foreign policy inheritance that includes an unpredictable American president who has already mocked him publicly, an ongoing war in Ukraine, and a European Union watching nervously to see whether Britain\'s next prime minister offers anything beyond incremental gestures. LBC turned to someone with genuine authority on the subject — Baroness Cathy Ashton, the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and a former Labour minister — for a considered assessment, and it is one of the more substantive pieces of analysis to emerge since Burnham\'s victory in Makerfield.
The interview is framed around a single central tension: Keir Starmer spent two years trying to manage Donald Trump through careful accommodation, and paid a real political price for it without obviously securing durable benefits in return. Does Burnham continue that approach, or does he chart something different?
“Foreign Policy Is Actually Domestic”
Ashton’s opening argument reframes how foreign and economic policy are usually discussed as separate tracks. “If you want to get economic growth, you’ve got to think about what your relationships are beyond your own shores,” she said, arguing that trade agreements and relations with major partners like the EU are inseparable from any credible domestic growth strategy — making Burnham’s much-discussed “good growth in every postcode” pledge, in her view, impossible to deliver through devolution alone.
On the specific question of Europe, Ashton was careful but pointed. Burnham has historically been “instinctively pro-European,” she noted, but has already accepted there will be no return to EU membership or a second referendum in the near term. The real question, in her framing, is whether he continues Starmer’s “bit by bit” incrementalism — small, cautious steps that avoid crossing the government’s self-imposed red lines on the customs union and single market — or whether he starts preparing the ground, even without breaking those red lines immediately, for a bigger relationship down the line. “There is a sense... that this sort of bit-by-bit approach leaves them wondering what the endgame is,” she said of EU leaders’ current view of Britain.
The Trump Problem: Learn From What Didn’t Work
On Trump, who had already publicly dismissed Burnham as “the mayor of some town or other” and predicted the two men would not get along, Ashton drew a careful distinction. She did not think Starmer had been wrong to try to build a working relationship with a new administration whose direction was genuinely uncertain at the time. But, she argued, “we’ve seen the consequences of that” — a strategy of accommodation that cost Starmer domestically without obviously buying Britain durable leverage internationally. Her advice for Burnham echoed guidance reportedly given by former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes: “Don’t try to appease Trump. He’s a bully. Stand up for yourself.” Ashton\'s own formulation was softer but pointed in the same direction — not picking unnecessary fights, but being clear and consistent about “this is who we are and this is what we think,” rather than bending the message to fit the moment.
Aid, Defence and an Unresolved Contradiction
Perhaps Ashton’s sharpest criticism was reserved for the Starmer government’s decision to fold international development into the Foreign Office and cut aid spending to help fund higher defence spending — a decision that prompted the resignation of a development minister. Ashton, drawing on her own experience negotiating around Somali piracy and the Sudanese refugee crisis, argued this treats aid and defence as substitutable when they are, in practice, deeply interconnected: without investment in stability abroad, security problems simply migrate rather than disappear. Whether Burnham reconsiders that trade-off is, in her assessment, a genuine and open test of how differently he intends to govern.
What This Means Going Forward
Foreign policy rarely decides British elections, but it shapes how a prime minister is perceived on the world stage and, indirectly, how confident voters feel about their government\'s competence. If Burnham adopts Ashton\'s implicit advice — more clarity, less accommodation, and a serious look at whether the aid-for-defence trade-off is sustainable — it would mark a genuine break from the Starmer years rather than simply a change of face. Given how central the "different from Starmer" pitch is to Burnham\'s entire political positioning against both Labour\'s troubled record and Reform UK\'s rise, this is a test he cannot afford to fail quietly.