What Britain’s new leader is learning from Donald Trump

LONDON — Andy Burnham’s political success depends on his ability to turn Britain away from the wave of nationalist populism that gave the world Donald Trump. That has not stopped the U.K.’s incoming prime minister from studying the president’s rise, and — deliberately or not — embracing some of his methods for the political battles with the British right that lie ahead. “Trump is very unpopular in Britain,” said Luke Tryl, executive director at More in Common U.K., a think-tank and polling agency. “But even people who really don’t like him will say, at least he does what he says he’ll do.” Just being seen to be active in this way is something Burnham “can learn” from insurgent populists like Trump, Ttyl added. Burnham, the new leader of the center-left Labour Party, takes over as U.K. prime minister on Monday. He has been catapulted into power by his colleagues, who fear being wiped out at the next general election after months of missteps and scandals under outgoing premier Keir Starmer. The far-right populist Reform UK party — founded five years ago and led by Trump ally Nigel Farage — has stormed the board in recent elections across the country, shattering Labour’s traditional strongholds and leading opinion polls nationally for more than a year. Labour MPs hope Burnham can be the fresh-faced outsider to revive the party’s wilting relationship with the increasingly cynical voters it has lost. He has been clear for years about the party’s task: If Labour fails, British politics, he says, are in danger of following the United States and electing the most right-wing government it has ever seen. Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage, whose party has stormed the polls, speaks on the second day of the inaugural CPAC Great Britain summit in London on July 17, 2026. | Carl Court/Getty Images “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,” Burnham wrote with his co-author Steve Rotheram in their 2024 book “Head North.” In order to deliver for millions of working-class voters, they wrote, Labour must “take the fight to the radical Right on the very turf that they claim to hold.” That starts with channeling the anger of the rejected outsider. There are signs that what drives both Trump and Burnham is a personal resentment at the political elites who once sneered at them — and a desire to upend the old hierarchy of snobs. Many commentators have spoken of how the president’s experience suffering the scorn of America’s wealthy and powerful elites in his previous role as a real estate mogul and celebrity motivated his political mission. Critically, Trump’s ability to convey that sense of being dismissed by the establishment resonated with voters who feel cast aside by the same elites. Burnham, if anything, has been even more direct than Trump about his own hang-ups. In “Head North,” Burnham, who was Greater Manchester mayor at the time, and Rotheram, the Liverpool mayor, described being treated like “second-class citizens” in their previous roles as MPs by the elitist politicians in London: “We want you to know how it felt to hear those sneering voices in the corridors of power.” In this passage of their book, Burnham and Rotheram were addressing their grandchildren. Many voters in their northern homelands already know what it feels like to be ignored by the center. Burnham never misses the chance to portray himself as an outsider from the working-class former industrial areas in the North of England, and his positioning can work, according to analysts. With his regional accent, he seems “authentic” and not like a member of the London establishment to many voters who backed Labour two years ago but have since walked away, said political consultant Deborah Mattinson, who was the party’s director of strategy before the 2024 election. People react as a person holds a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump, who has been effective in commu