{"id":88255,"date":"2026-07-22T16:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/88255\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T16:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:04:14","slug":"uks-miliband-streeting-what-are-their-foreign-policy-defence-records-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/88255\/","title":{"rendered":"UK\u2019s Miliband, Streeting: What are their foreign policy, defence records? | Politics News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Burnham<\/a>, who has replaced Keir Starmer to become the United Kingdom\u2019s seventh prime minister in a decade, has pledged to end the political instability that has plagued the country, stating that he was \u201cfed up\u201d with the country\u2019s \u2060\u2060revolving door of leadership.<\/p>\n

Burnham moved fast after taking office on Monday. He sacked several Starmer loyalists, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, and promoted allies who had left the previous cabinet before he convened his first cabinet meeting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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Those allies included Ed Miliband, hired as foreign secretary, and Wes Streeting, as defence secretary. The two men now hold the UK\u2019s most internationally consequential portfolios, and both arrive with track records that give clues and raise questions about how they\u2019ll approach them.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what you need to know:<\/p>\n

Ed Miliband \u2013 who is he?<\/p>\n

Born in 1969 to Polish Jewish immigrants; his father, Ralph, was a Marxist intellectual who fled Belgium during World War II.<\/p>\n

Miliband has been an MP for Doncaster North since 2005, served in Gordon Brown\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Britain'sUK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband arrives for a cabinet meeting in Downing Street on July 21, 2026, a day after Andy Burnham became prime minister [AFP]Miliband\u2019s foreign policy record<\/p>\n

Miliband\u2019s defining intervention came in 2013 when he opposed military action against former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime following a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near Damascus in 2013. His opposition to the Conservative government\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Critics accused him of sabotaging efforts to stop al-Assad from committing further war crimes.<\/p>\n

Challenged in March 2015 by Jeremy Paxman, a journalist known for his hard-hitting interviews, over whether he was \u201ctough enough\u201d to be prime minister, Miliband replied, \u201cHell, yes, I\u2019m tough enough,\u201d citing his refusal to back air strikes in Syria.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in February \u2013 a refusal that drove a wedge between Starmer and US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Miliband has made no secret of his hostility towards Trump, which now complicates the UK\u2019s \u201cspecial relationship\u201d with the US, which he must now manage.<\/p>\n

\"LONDON,Then-Labour Party leader Ed Miliband chats with Jeremy Paxman in 2015 [File: Chris Lobina\/Sky News via Getty]Net zero: Miliband\u2019s green credentials<\/p>\n

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\u2019s electricity grid so at least 95 percent of its power is generated from zero-carbon sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.<\/p>\n

British media have reported that key allies of the new prime minister strongly opposed this policy, believing it would raise energy prices further in the short term at a time when Britons are struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n

Miliband also halted the issuing of new North Sea oil and gas exploration licences.<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly criticised Miliband\u2019s energy policies, saying the UK is wasting the \u201ctreasure chest\u201d of oil and gas reserves in the North Sea by halting exploration.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s energy secretary, Chris Wright, has described the UK\u2019s 2050 net zero target as a \u201csinister goal\u201d and \u201clunacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wes Streeting \u2013 who is he?<\/p>\n

Born in 1983, Streeting grew up in a council flat in Stepney in East London and was the first in his family to go to university, reading history at Cambridge before becoming president of the National Union of Students.<\/p>\n

He worked in the charity sector on educational disadvantage, served as deputy leader of Redbridge Council, then won Ilford North in 2015 with the country\u2019s biggest Conservative-to-Labour swing before rising up through shadow roles to become health secretary in 2024.<\/p>\n

\"Britain'sStreeting attends the Global Combat Air Programme at Wellington Barracks in London on July 21, 2026 [AFP]Streeting\u2019s defence record<\/p>\n

Streeting has essentially no defence background and, as a backbencher, he spoke about the UK\u2019s defence policy sparingly.<\/p>\n

Speaking to LBC Radio the day before Streeting\u2019s appointment was confirmed, Richard Dannatt, former head of the army, said Streeting \u201cknows pretty much the square root of nothing about defence\u201d, arguing that removing Dan Jarvis, a former army officer, after six weeks would be a retrograde step.<\/p>\n

A Labour Friends of Israel member for more than 20 years, Streeting followed the party line after Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, declining to back a ceasefire<\/a> and calling South Africa\u2019s genocide case<\/a> before the International Court of Justice a distraction.<\/p>\n

However, as the war on the enclave dragged on, his public position shifted. By April 2025, he called Israel\u2019s attacks on Gaza \u201cintolerable\u201d and by September said they were leading Israel to pariah status.<\/p>\n

Texts to Peter Mandelson, the former ambassador to the US, sent in July 2025 and later made public went further still: Israel was committing war crimes \u201cbefore our eyes\u201d, he wrote, endorsing sanctions on the country.<\/p>\n

However, he has rejected the term \u201cgenocide\u201d, and antiwar groups, including Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, have called his defence appointment disgraceful.<\/p>\n

He has also faced criticism for his move to use pro-Israel firm Palantir\u2019s algorithms in the National Health Service<\/a>. He has continued to defend that decision.<\/p>\n

\"Britain'sStreeting after his first cabinet meeting under PM Burnham in London [Chris J Ratcliffe\/Reuters]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham, who has replaced Keir Starmer to become the United Kingdom\u2019s seventh prime minister in a decade,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[252,9042,90,181,41,1816,18,14,38202,5,6],"class_list":["post-88255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-europe","tag-explainer","tag-gaza","tag-government","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-military","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-syrias-war","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116964482357524900","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}