Miliband, Streeting: thin UK foreign, defence records
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- Ed Miliband's defining foreign policy intervention was opposing 2013 UK military action against the Assad regime after the Ghouta chemical weapons attack, a vote that helped defeat the campaign and preceded US withdrawal from planned strikes.
- Miliband pushed Starmer on recognizing a Palestinian state and was a key internal voice against UK involvement in the US-Israel attack on Iran in February, a refusal that strained the UK's relationship with Trump.
- Miliband's championing of the UK's 2050 net zero target and halt on new North Sea oil and gas licences drew repeated attacks from Trump, while US Energy Secretary Chris Wright labelled the target a 'sinister goal' and 'lunacy'.
- Wes Streeting arrives as defence secretary with essentially no defence background; former army head Richard Dannatt told LBC he 'knows pretty much the square root of nothing about defence' and called removing Dan Jarvis, a former army officer, after six weeks a retrograde step.
- Streeting initially followed Labour's party line on Gaza after October 2023, declining to back a ceasefire and calling South Africa's ICJ case a distraction, but by April 2025 called Israeli attacks 'intolerable' and in July 2025 texts to Peter Mandelson described Israel committing war crimes 'before our eyes' and endorsed sanctions.
- Streeting has rejected the term 'genocide', prompting Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to call his defence appointment disgraceful, and faces separate criticism for using pro-Israel firm Palantir's algorithms in the NHS.
- Andy Burnham took office as the UK's seventh prime minister in a decade, sacking Starmer loyalists including Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy PM David Lammy before his first cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Why it matters: The UK's new foreign secretary has openly clashed with Trump over Iran, Gaza, and net zero policy, while its new defence secretary has been told he knows 'pretty much the square root of nothing about defence' by a former army chief — two appointments that directly test the UK's special relationship with Washington and its credibility on the world stage from day one.
