Patrick Way

Burnham Was Warned. He Appointed Miliband Anyway Washington does not usually warn incoming prime ministers before they take office. It did this time. The Telegraph has revealed that the White House told Andy Burnham's team, in the informal contacts that precede any change of government, that Ed Miliband would be a problem. Burnham was told before he had the keys to Downing Street. He took the warning, and on Monday he handed Miliband the Foreign Office regardless. Steve Bannon's assessment is blunt but accurate. Burnham, he says, could not care less. The evidence supports him. This was not an oversight. It was a choice made with full knowledge of the cost. The cost is not abstract. Miliband spent the past year demonstrating exactly the instincts that made Washington nervous. In February he led the National Security Council in blocking American use of UK bases, a decision that persuaded Sir Keir Starmer to deny Diego Garcia to Washington at the opening of the war on Iran. He beat John Healey, the Defence Secretary whose job it actually was to weigh that call, and Starmer sided with him. The reversal came only after Iran struck a British base, which is to say only after the argument was settled by force rather than judgment. As energy secretary he blocked North Sea drilling, a policy Trump has criticised directly and repeatedly. None of this is buried history. It is the record Burnham had in front of him when he made his decision. Then there is the personal record, which is worse. In 2016 Miliband wrote of resisting "the worst of Trumpism" and described the president's election as leaving "little solace." He told the BBC that sharing values with Trump "beggars belief," and specified why in terms no diplomat would choose. In 2017 he said Trump had "lowered the bar for idiocy" and marched against him through London. A Foreign Secretary's job includes managing the most consequential relationship Britain has. Burnham has given that job to a man who has spent a decade on record calling the other head of state a bigot. Miliband's own first words in the role confirmed the diagnosis. He pledged to deepen ties with the European Union. Only after that did he mention, almost as an addendum, Britain's alliance with the United States. A new Foreign Secretary's first public sentence is read closely by every chancellery watching. Miliband's told Washington where it ranks. Compare this with David Lammy, who held the same brief under Starmer and was quietly sidelined from broadcast interviews once his own historical comments about Trump became a liability. Lammy salvaged something through his relationship with JD Vance. Miliband has no equivalent relationship to fall back on. His connections run to John Kerry and the Democratic establishment Trump defeated twice. His idea of common ground with the president, we are told, is baseball. None of this happened by accident. Burnham was handed a direct warning from the government of Britain's closest ally and decided the warning did not matter. That tells you what his premiership intends to prioritise, and it is not the transatlantic relationship. A government that begins by ignoring Washington's explicit concerns is not signalling independence. It is signalling that the alliance is now negotiable. Trump has already shown, in his treatment of Starmer, how little patience he extends to leaders who misjudge him. Burnham has just handed him a Foreign Secretary who spent a decade calling him unfit for office. The special relationship survived Starmer's paralysis. Whether it survives Miliband's appointment is now an open question, and Burnham chose to ask it. "In 2017 Miliband said Trump had "lowered the bar for idiocy" and marched against him through London."