Donald Trump has upset a whole city after issuing his verdict on Keir Starmer’s potential successor, Andy Burnham.
Donald Trump has managed to insult the entire city of Manchester with just one word: town.
When asked in the Oval Office what he thinks of Keir Starmer ‘s potential successor, the 47th President of the United States did not appear to know much about Britain’s next likely leader, unwittingly dumping shade on both Burnham and Manchester in one go.
The US President said: “I don’t know anything. I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a… town?”
Trump added: “I hear he is extremely liberal. Extremely.”
The US President’s comment diminishing Manchester from a city to a town did not go down well on social media, with Brits online letting their thoughts be known.
One person said, via X, formerly Twitter : “Now he insults the great city of Manchester. When will this all end?”
A second added: “A mayor of a town? Clueless Dozy Don is off again.”
A third piped up with: “He was actually Mayor of Manchester, one of Britain’s largest cities, not just a town.”
A fourth quipped: “He never fails to embarrass us.”
Trump’s comments, which came in a Q&A session in Washington DC, gave what is perhaps a hint at what’s to come in the Special Relationship.
He continued: “I hear he’s extremely liberal – extremely. So I guess he won’t open up the North Sea.”
Trump has frequently moaned about the UK’s decision to halt licences to drill in the North Sea for a number of reasons. Restarting drilling would almost certainly benefit American companies bidding for licences.
But another major factor is his decades-long vendetta against wind farms, which stems from the Scottish government erecting turbines off the coast of Aberdeen next to his luxury golf course.
Trump went on: “You know, I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice, I said “Open up the North Sea”. I said “go to Aberdeen which is the hottest city in the whole continent, it was the oil city, it was the oil of Europe. It was terrible.”
Asked whether he’d like to be among the first on his list for a visit from Burnham, assuming he is, in fact, the next Prime Minister, Trump said: “No. But I think we’re of a different persuasion. He’s very liberal.” He then started banging on about how great it would be if American companies could hoover up British oil.
He said: “You know I got along well with Starmer, I disagreed with Starmer, but I said you have two problems, immigration and energy. And crime, too by the way. You have the greatest oil field in the world, one of them. It’s called the North Sea Oil. All you have to do is bid it out to Exon, Chevron, Shell, British Petroleum.
“They’re begging to go there and are willing to pay billions of dollars. But because the left is so crazy they don’t want the money.”
