From the man in the street to most people in Congress, he is a nobody.”
As mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017, Burnham is out of practice in international diplomacy. His main opponents have been London's civil servants and parochial town hall leaders.
Nina Sawetz, a communications adviser who worked with Burnham's mayoral team, said his instinctive reaction to any Trump provocation would be to focus on “outcomes and interests for the UK, rather than compete on personalities.”
“My expectation is that Trump will initially interpret Burnham's refusal to engage in a running public battle as a sign that he has the upper hand.
I think that would be a misreading,” she added.
“The greater opportunity for the president lies in Burnham's tendency to wear his frustrations on his sleeve more than many political leaders.”
How to navigate the notoriously mercurial, thin-skinned and volatile Trump?
Many foreign leaders have been desperate to avoid the fate of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was berated by Trump in the Oval Office last year.
Jacobs said: “The starting point for dealing with Trump is to accept you're dealing with an aberration, a highly unstable, erratic president who has very low self-esteem.
If you do anything that kind of disrupts Trump's sense of himself, the relationship is over.”
“My advice to Burnham would be treat Donald Trump like a constituent back home who is poorly informed and quite emotional.
How would you deal with that person?”
Burnham faces an uphill struggle since Trump has shown more interest in oil-rich Gulf Arab nations than traditional allies in his second term.
