Trump calls UK 'bankrupt' and backs Burnham on drilling after phone call

Donald Trump has described Britain as "bankrupt" and called for drilling to resume in the North Sea, following a phone call with Andy Burnham. The former US president told GB News he was "very impressed" with the Greater Manchester mayor and said Burnham was "surrounded terrific" - though the exact context of that phrase remains unclear.

Trump's intervention comes as Burnham positions himself as a Labour figure willing to talk to international leaders directly, a role no metro mayor has attempted before. The Independent reports Trump is pressing for North Sea drilling to restart, which would cut directly across the government's current net-zero trajectory. GB News carried Trump's "bankrupt" comment without additional context on what metric he was using.

The category doing work here is "bankrupt" - a word that means a specific legal state but is now deployed as political shorthand for fiscal stress. Britain is not insolvent in any technical sense: it can still borrow, still services its debt, still issues its own currency. What Trump likely means is that the debt-to-GDP ratio is high and the growth rate is low - but calling that "bankruptcy" is to diagnose a chronic condition as an acute crisis. The conflation is useful if you want to argue for a reset, less so if you want to describe the state of things accurately.

Meanwhile, GB News also reports that Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign group, has praised Burnham's proposal for a written constitution as "laying groundwork to abolish the monarchy" - a reading Burnham has not endorsed. The claim ties two separate reforms together: codifying the rules of government, and changing who sits at the top of it. One does not require the other, but the framing suggests it might.

What to watch: whether Burnham responds to Trump's characterisation, and whether the government addresses the "bankrupt" claim directly or lets it sit.