UK’s Miliband, Streeting: What are their foreign policy, defence records?
Miliband, a Trump critic who once opposed strikes on Syria, joins Streeting, a defence novice with shifting views on Israel, in PM Burnham’s cabinet. Andy
Miliband, a Trump critic who once opposed strikes on Syria, joins Streeting, a defence novice with shifting views on Israel, in PM Burnham’s cabinet. Andy Burnham, who has replaced Keir Starmer to become the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade, has pledged to end the political instability that has plagued the country, stating that he was “fed up” with the country’s revolving door of leadership. Burnham moved fast after taking office on Monday. He sacked several Starmer loyalists, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, and allies who had left the previous cabinet before he convened his first cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Those allies included Ed Miliband, hired as foreign secretary, and Wes Streeting, as defence secretary. The two men now hold the UK’s most internationally consequential portfolios, and both arrive with track records that give clues and raise questions about how they’ll approach them. Here’s what you need to know Ed Miliband – who is he? Born in 1969 to Polish Jewish immigrants; his father, Ralph, was a Marxist intellectual who fled Belgium during World War II. Miliband has been an MP for Doncaster North since 2005, served in Gordon Brown’s cabinet alongside his brother, David (then foreign secretary), and led the Labour Party from 2010 to 2015. He held the energy and climate brief under Starmer until this week.
Miliband’s foreign policy record Miliband’s defining intervention came in 2013 when he opposed military action against former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime following a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near Damascus in 2013. His opposition to the Conservative government’s plan to bomb regime targets helped defeat the campaign in a key House of Commons vote, after which the United States also pulled back from the strikes. Critics accused him of sabotaging efforts to stop al-Assad from committing further war crimes. Challenged in March 2015 by Jeremy Paxman, a journalist known for his hard-hitting interviews, over whether he was “tough enough” to be prime minister, Miliband replied, “Hell, yes, I’m tough enough,” citing his refusal to back air strikes in Syria. More recently, he reportedly pressed Starmer on recognition of a Palestinian state and was a key internal voice against UK involvement when the US and Israel attacked Iran in February – a refusal that drove a wedge between Starmer and US President Donald Trump. Miliband has made no secret of his hostility towards Trump, which now complicates the UK’s “special relationship” with the US, which he must now manage. Net zero: Miliband’s green credentials Miliband was best known in recent years for championing the goal to make the UK achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and decarbonising the country’s electricity grid so at least 95 percent of its power is generated from zero-carbon sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.
The BriefWire