Labour cabinet splits over Assad

Another day, another Labour drama. It now transpires that Sir Keir Starmer’s army is in turmoil over a previous Labour party’s response to Bashar al-Assad’s regime – with one current Cabinet Secretary taking a pop at another. Talk about trouble in paradise, eh?

Appearing on BBC Question Time, Health Secretary Wes Streeting remarked that ‘if the West had acted faster, Assad would have been gone’. He went on:

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.

How curious – particularly given some of Streeting’s colleagues were, er, on the opposition frontbenches at that time. In retaliation, Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband has hit back, slamming the Health Secretary’s take to fume:

We know that President Trump bombed Syria in 2017 and 2018. Clearly, that didn’t produce the fall of President Assad’s regime.