Streeting’s clash with Miliband over Syria exposes Energy Secretary as Cabinet’s weak point

As Westminster’s great and good gathered for The Spectator magazine’s parliamentary awards last week, it fell to Wes Streeting to give the main address.

The annual bash has garnered a reputation for close to the bone political jokes that carry a ring of truth. On a previous occasion, Theresa May compared Boris Johnson, who was newly appointed to her Cabinet after his failed Tory leadership attempt in 2016, to a dog she could put down at will.

But even so, raised eyebrows greeted Mr Streeting’s decision to use the address to issue a quietly brutal takedown of a fellow Labour Cabinet minister.

The Health Secretary made a quip about Kemi Badenoch’s early weeks as Tory leader. “I am sorry that Kemi Badenoch can’t be here tonight but it’s good to see her repeating all the same mistakes we made in opposition,” he said.

“Trashing her party’s own record... talking to the members not the voters. Kemi, carry on like this and you’ll be Energy Secretary in ten years’ time.”

The Energy Secretary is, of course, Ed Miliband.

In the last 24 hours, the apparent discord between the pair escalated.

During Thursday’s BBC Question Time, Mr Streeting said the UK’s “hesitation” to intervene in Syria after the use of chemical weapons in 2013 kept Bashar al-Assad in power longer.

Such “hesitation” was down to Mr Miliband, then the Labour leader, flipping his position at the last moment and voting against air strikes, which forced defeat upon Lord Cameron, prime minister at the time, and blocked Barack Obama, the former US president, from policing his self-declared “red line”.

Mr Miliband hit back on Friday during a morning media round, saying it was “just wrong” to claim as Mr Streeting had that Assad would have gone if the Western air strikes had been carried out.

The specifics of policy towards Syria a decade ago, where blame lies and the imponderables of what would have happened if different decisions were made will be raked over in the coming days.

Credit: BBC Question Time/Sky News

But the clash speaks to something else too: the coalition of ministers that Sir Keir Starmer has gathered at the top of his young Government and the tensions already starting to emerge. These tensions are festering as Sir Keir struggles to connect to the public and articulate a clear vision for his Government.

First, it is key to understand that Mr Miliband and Mr Streeting have subtly different Labour political leanings.

The former, despite being a disciple of New Labour as one of Gordon Brown’s trusted Treasury advisers, has long positioned himself broadly on the soft Left.

He won the Labour leadership in 2010 by promising to distance himself from the project and proceeded to do so for five years before losing the 2015 election to Lord Cameron, paving the way for Jeremy Corbyn and more years in opposition.

Despite this, Mr Miliband, 54, has identified not being bolder in carving out a new Left-leaning path as one regret of his leadership.

The true heir to Blair

Mr Streeting – as was hinted at by his swipe at The Spectator awards – is widely seen as a Blairite, with some even pointing to him as the true “heir to Blair”. The 41-year-old, a different political generation to Mr Miliband, spent his formative years watching the New Labour revolution from the outside, and it inspired and shaped his beliefs.

He vowed to carry forward the flame of NHS reform lit by the New Labour Government and appointed Alan Milburn, one of its former health secretaries, as his adviser.

The Starmer project, for all its ideological shifts since he stuck close to Mr Corbyn to win the Labour leadership in 2020, has settled closer to Mr Streeting’s than Mr Miliband’s position.

The dynamic leads on to a fascinating second aspect of this clash: the wider significance it hints at for the Government and what is really going on behind the scenes.

It is an underlying truth that there is no difficulty finding figures in the Labour world who consider Mr Miliband’s impassioned drive towards cleaner energy as a big political warning light flashing red.

Last month, the general secretary of a trade union described Mr Miliband to The Telegraph as a “fanatic” over Net Zero, warning that unrealistic targets set would inevitably come back to bite.

Specifically, the promise to bring about “zero-carbon” electricity by 2030, one of the five missions for the Starmer Government set out before taking office, was singled out as unachievable.

The broad argument went: there is no way to hit that by 2030, nor the Labour election campaign argument that it will reduce bills and voters will realise this soon enough.

Set aside the right or wrong of such claims for a moment – Mr Miliband insists that it is deliverable and fossil fuel reliance drives up prices – and look at recent signs in the specifics.

For there is evidence that even in the first five months in office, the edges are being shaved off some of this Government’s green policy drives, with half an eye on business impacts and financial costs.

Take the clean energy promise. The mission, when it was launched at the start of this year, promised “100 per cent” clean energy. The manifesto talked about “zero” carbon energy.

Then, last week, the target, which was renamed a milestone, has become only “95 per cent” clean energy. And the UK only needs to be “on track” for that figure come the next election. The current level for low-carbon electricity hovers at just above 60 per cent, so way off.

Or take the so-called “zero emission vehicle [ZEV] mandate”, which dictates what proportion of clean cars a manufacturer must make each year or face hefty fines.

Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, announced a review last month into how the targets are working after Vauxhall said it was closing its Luton factory, bringing down the curtains on 120 years of operating there. Mr Reynolds said “a bit of a pragmatic rethink” may be needed.

Or take Mr Miliband’s election campaign promise that Labour’s push for cleaner energy would reduce bills by £300, which was scoffed at then by Tories and industry figures. There was no mention of the number when the new “milestone” for clean energy by 2030 was unveiled in Sir Keir’s six-point “Plan for Change” document last week.

And these are the indications after less than six months of the five-year stretch until the next election, when Labour’s energy policies are still only beginning to be implemented.

It explains why Mr Streeting’s public slight is a piece in a wider puzzle – one which could pose a major headache for the Prime Minister: the growing nervousness over the political implications of Mr Miliband’s clean energy agenda for the Starmer project.