In his initial public remarks concerning Andy Burnham, US President Donald Trump has labelled the prospective British prime minister as "extremely liberal," predicting he "probably won’t open up the North Sea" for oil exploration.
The US president further dismissed Mr Burnham, describing him as "the mayor of a town."
Mr Trump also reiterated his dissatisfaction with the UK’s handling of the Iran conflict, adding his belief that Sir Keir Starmer had "now gone."
Mr Burnham, a newly elected MP and former Greater Manchester mayor, is currently the sole contender for the top job, with the Prime Minister set to remain in post until a successor is chosen.
The president had repeatedly lambasted Sir Keir over his energy stance and not allowing further oil drilling in the North Sea, relying instead on “windmills”.
Mr Trump argued this had hurt the Prime Minister “very, very badly”.
Asked at the White House what he knew about Mr Burnham, the president said: “I don’t know, I think I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town.
“I hear he’s extremely liberal, extremely, so that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea.
“I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice. I said open up the North Sea, go to Aberdeen, which was the hottest city of the whole continent.
“It was the oil city of Europe, and they closed everything. It was terrible. I couldn’t believe it.
“The North Sea is loaded. I have had every oil company come to see me, ‘Sir, could you give us access to the UK? We would do anything to drill in the North Sea’.
“The amazing thing is they buy their oil from Norway, which gets the oil from the North Sea. Think of it, and they pay a big premium.
“Norway’s got now two trillion dollars in the bank, and the UK is dying, so they should open up the North Sea, and it’s an easy one, and a lot of good things are going to happen. It’s among the greatest deals in the world.”
Mr Trump made his comments during a meeting with Nato chief Mark Rutte ahead of a crucial summit of the military alliance in Turkey.
The president has been scathing of allies, including the UK, for their refusal to be drawn into the war with Iran or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz waterway after the US-Israeli offensive against Tehran effectively shut the key oil supply route.
Sir Keir initially denied the US use of British military bases to conduct the bombing campaign against Iran, although limited permission was subsequently granted for defensive strikes.
The conflict served to fuel existing tensions over Nato, with Mr Trump arguing America had been bankrolling the defence of other countries.
A row over UK military spending led John Healey to recently quit as defence secretary.
Praising Mr Rutte, Mr Trump said: “I think if anybody else were in that position, we wouldn’t even be meeting today, to be honest with you, because we were let down.
“We didn’t need help on this at all. We demolished them (Iran) in literally the first week, but it would have been nice if they would have said ‘We’d like to help’.
“We didn’t even need it, but it would have been nice if they’d said, they didn’t say.
“I think if I would have called him (Mr Rutte), he probably would have found a way to help if we needed it. I feel, you know, would have been a little bit different.”
The president added: “But I was disappointed. I was disappointed with Italy, I was disappointed with the UK.
“He (Sir Keir) has now gone, and you know, he had a lot of problems, but we were disappointed with the UK, we were disappointed with Germany and France. We were disappointed with most of them.
“Spain is a horror show. Spain is terrible… I mean, they don’t want to pay anything. They think they’re in for a free ride.”
Earlier, Mr Rutte had sought to ease tensions with Mr Trump over Iran and threats by the US to reduce troop numbers in Europe.
The Nato secretary general used bar chart displays, favoured by the president, to highlight the increased spending by Nato members, and hailed Mr Trump for bringing it about.
Mr Rutte said: “I know there have been isolated cases about which you are really disappointed, but generally speaking your European allies have been there with you.”
He pointed out that up to to 5,000 US planes took off from bases in Europe before Tehran and Washington agreed to a ceasefire.
Mr Rutte added: “It would have been very difficult to do Iran without having Europe as a power projection platform for the United States.”
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