Health Secretary Wes Streeting has criticised Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, over his failure to back military action against Assad in 2013, saying the “hesitation” created a “vacuum” that Russia filled. The Telegraph has more.
Mr. Miliband, the Energy Secretary, was Labour leader when he led efforts to torpedo Lord Cameron’s attempt to launch strikes in Syria to deter the use of chemical weapons.
On Thursday night Mr. Streeting, the Health Secretary, said that “if the West had acted faster, Assad would have been gone”.
But Mr. Miliband rebuked his Cabinet colleague on Friday morning, saying it was “just wrong” to suggest Assad would have been forced from power sooner if the West had acted at the time.
He also said he had no regrets about his decision to vote against the U.K. joining U.S.-led strikes after the House of Commons narrowly rejected the move.
Asked if he regretted voting against proposed missile strikes in 2013, Mr. Miliband told Sky News: “No, I don’t… I welcome the fall of President Assad.
“Back in 2013 we were confronted with whether we should have a one-off, potential one-off, bombing of Syria but there was no plan for what this British involvement would mean, where it would lead and what the consequences would be and I believed that in the light of the Iraq war we could never send British troops back into combat unless we were absolutely clear about what our plan was, including what an exit strategy was.
“To those people who say that president Assad would have fallen if we had bombed him in 2013, that is obviously wrong because President Trump bombed president Assad in 2017 and 2018, so he didn’t fall.
“I welcome the fall of a brutal dictator but I think the view that some people seem to be expressing about history is just wrong.”
Mr. Miliband said the vote against U.K. military action in Syria in 2013 demonstrated that the nation had learnt “the right lessons” from the Iraq War.
It was suggested to the Labour frontbencher that the failure to act had not only given Assad confidence but had also emboldened Russia on the world stage.
He said: “I think it is very easy for people to say that the answer to the problems of the world is British military intervention.
“But as I said earlier, in this case we have a clear understanding of what the consequences might have been because in 2017 and 2018 there was military action against President Assad and it certainly didn’t precipitate the fall of his regime.
“I took the decisions I did because the British involvement in Iraq led to the deaths of our troops and was, rightly in my view, seen as a very serious error and so without re-going over all of that history, I think we drew the right lessons from that.”
His comments stand in stark contrast to those made by Mr. Streeting during an appearance on the BBC Question Time programme.
Mr. Streeting said: “With hindsight, I think we can say, looking back on the events of 2013, that the hesitation of this country and the United States created a vacuum that Russia moved into and kept Assad in power for much longer.”
He added: “I think if the West had acted faster, Assad would have been gone.
“Would that have led to a better Syria? I don’t know. We know from our own foreign policy history that inaction is a choice, but so is action, and we’ve seen in other cases, like Libya, that it did not lead to a better future.”
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