Bridget Phillipson: Burnham’s past comments on Trump are ‘no bar to having a strong relationship’

Andy Burnham is expected to meet President Trump for the first time in person next week at the UN general assembly in New York. This morning, Sky News host Kamal Ahmed interviewed equalities minister Bridget Phillipson, and pointed to remarks the prime minister had made about the US president before entering government, including a 2021 comment that any UK politician who gave Trump ‘the time of day should be ashamed’, and a suggestion in 2019 that Trump ‘would not be welcome in Manchester’. Ahmed asked whether the meeting would be awkward, and put it to Phillipson that Labour is generally uncomfortable with the president but cannot say so publicly. Phillipson said that was simply politics and that Trump knows it, adding that people express different views at different points and that this is ‘no bar to having a strong relationship’. She said the US relationship matters for intelligence sharing and defence cooperation, including on Ukraine, and that this would be at the forefront of Burnham’s mind. 

Bridget Phillipson: Youth unemployment will keep rising ‘for some time’

Kamal Ahmed asked Bridget Phillipson whether the jobless rate among young people was going up or down, two years into the government. Phillipson admitted she imagined it was going up and would continue to do so ‘for some time’, arguing these were ‘long standing challenges’ that predated the pandemic and required early intervention, from a child’s early years........

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