Andy Burnham says he would be prepared to call out Donald Trump to defend Britain\u2019s \u201cnational interest before anything else\u201d if it is the right thing to do, in his first major interview as prime minister.<\/p>\n
Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Burnham said he had had a good first exchange with Trump, finding him to be \u201creally warm\u201d.<\/p>\n
But asked twice if he would trust the US president, he did not say, answering, \u201cit\u2019s a changing world isn\u2019t it, and you just obviously have to call things as they develop\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the interview, to be broadcast in full on Monday, he said: \u201cI can\u2019t at any point say that I won\u2019t take a different opinion from him [Trump], that I will need to voice a different idea that is right for Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham said: \u201cMy strength is remaining close to people, close to the public, that will not change as prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he would call out Trump if it was the right thing, he said, \u201cof course\u201d, going on to say: \u201cYou have to defend your own national interest before anything else. That\u2019s what you\u2019re required to do if you\u2019re to do this job properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham also said he had had \u201cconcern\u201d about the president starting the conflict with Iran, and he \u201cwouldn\u2019t hold back from saying what I think is right\u201d.<\/p>\n
The prime minister would not commit to a date when the government would spend 3% of GDP on defence. His Chancellor John Healey resigned from the previous government saying that unless a commitment was made to spend that amount by 2030, the country would not be safe.<\/p>\n
But Burnham said: \u201cI appointed my new chancellor very aware of what he had said about the critical importance of defence spending and the position that he had taken about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first challenge facing us both is to ensure that the defence investment plan is fully funded and that\u2019s the thing that\u2019s right in front of us and we need to work that through as we go towards the budget later this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
sked again specifically about the commitment to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP, he said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to work out the way of doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham, for the first time, explicitly dismissed the idea of an early general election before 2029, saying: \u201cI\u2019m going to rule it out\u2026 I don\u2019t think people want it.\u201d He said his focus instead was on \u201cgetting the country back where it should be\u201d.<\/p>\n
The post Burnham says he is prepared to call out Trump \u2018if right for Britain\u2019<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andy Burnham says he would be prepared to call out Donald Trump to defend Britain\u2019s \u201cnational interest before anything else\u201d if it is the right thing to do, in his first major interview as prime minister. Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Burnham said he had had a good first exchange with Trump, finding him to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}