New Delhi, July 21 -- LONDON - Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street on Monday as Britain's new Prime Minister, the seventh to hold the office in a decade, only to find himself the subject of an unsolicited performance review from Washington. On Truth Social, Donald Trump declared Britain a "poverty stricken disaster," a verdict delivered even as Buckingham Palace was processing Burnham's appointment papers.

Trump's intervention was characteristically contradictory. Within hours of the broadside, he softened his position, expressing what he called admiration for Burnham's reported plans to expand North Sea oil drilling, writing that such a move would transform Britain "from one of the greatest poverty stricken disasters to one of the r...