Burnham needs a certain distance.”
Stengel added: “I would no longer mention the special relationship.
That is a dog that doesn't hunt any more and Americans don't get it and I don't know if the Brits do and it also seems to someone like Trump like you're being deferential.”
Some analysts point to Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, as the gold standard.
Earlier this year Carney delivered a speech at Davos that did not mention Trump by name but declared that the US-led “rules-based international order” was facing a permanent rupture.
Steve Schmidt, a political strategist and former adviser to Senator John McCain, said: “There are many people who would look at the state of the world and hold the view that Mark Carney is the most serious and important leader in the English-speaking world and is the person who has most fundamentally and substantially understood Trump and drew a line that other world leaders have rallied around.”
Blumenthal, who introduced Clinton to Blair before the latter became prime minister, has further advice based on November's midterm elections.
“Unlike Starmer, Burnham will very likely have at least one Democratic counterpoint in the Congress, either the House and/or the Senate to deal with.”
“Burnham represents the parliament himself and he should deal with them extensively.
If the Democrats get control of either house, they are his allies and they can help him in innumerable ways.
His government should establish extensive relationships with a new Democratic Congress to the benefit of Britain. That did not exist for Starmer.”
The phrase “special relationship” was coined by Winston Churchill during a lecture tour of the US after the second world war.
Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had been allies against Hitler, setting the bar for future double acts including Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Blair and Clinton, and Blair and George W Bush.
Gordon Brown had a less happy experience with Barack Obama, who was evidently more at ease with Angela Merkel of Germany.
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Brown tried five times to get a meeting with Obama on the fringes of the 2009 UN general assembly but was merely granted a “snatched conversation.”
