Ed Miliband, who takes the foreign secretary role, was born in 1969 to Polish Jewish immigrant parents and has served as Doncaster North’s MP since 2005. He previously held cabinet positions under Gordon Brown and led the Labour Party from 2010 to 2015. Most notably, Miliband opposed military intervention against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2013 following chemical weapons attacks, helping defeat a parliamentary vote on air strikes that ultimately influenced US withdrawal from the campaign as well.
In his most recent position as energy and climate secretary under the previous administration, Miliband championed the UK’s net zero carbon emissions target by 2050 and halted new North Sea oil and gas exploration licences. These policies have drawn criticism from allies of the new prime minister concerned about energy price impacts during a cost-of-living crisis, and have been repeatedly criticized by US President Donald Trump, whose energy secretary called the net zero target “lunacy.”
Miliband has also taken positions that complicate UK-US relations, including pressing for Palestinian state recognition and opposing UK involvement when the US and Israel attacked Iran earlier this year. His documented hostility toward Trump adds another layer of complexity to managing the traditional US-UK relationship.
Wes Streeting, the new defence secretary, brings a notably different background. Born in 1983, he grew up in council housing in East London and was the first in his family to attend university. He worked in education charity sectors and local government before winning Ilford North in 2015 with a significant Conservative-to-Labour swing, becoming health secretary in 2024.
Streeting has virtually no defence experience, drawing criticism from military figures who question his suitability for the role. On Middle East policy, Streeting initially followed party lines after the 2023 Gaza conflict began, opposing ceasefire calls, but shifted publicly by mid-2025 to describe Israeli actions as “intolerable” and later “war crimes” in private communications. Antiwar groups have criticized his appointment, though he continues to reject the genocide characterization and has defended his involvement with pro-Israel technology firm Palantir’s NHS algorithms.
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