However long Andy Burnham may last as the United Kingdom’s prime minister, he has already made clear he won’t play the role of international anti-Trump liberal dreamboat previously held by Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau (and currently occupied, however awkwardly, by Canadian premier Mark Carney).
Perhaps that’s just as well. Scratch that; there’s no “perhaps” about it. As every single article about Burnham’s accession to power will inform you, he is now Britain’s seventh prime minister within the last 10 years, going back — not at all coincidentally — to the Brexit vote in 2016 that ended then-P.M. David Cameron’s career and sent the U.K. down the slippery slide into international irrelevance and permanent financial crisis.
