Can Ed Milliband and Wes Streeting really stand up to Putin?

Yet his Cabinet appointments have already prompted predictable debate about Labour’s ideological direction.

Two appointments in particular have ignited scrutiny: Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary and Wes Streeting as Secretary of State for Defence. There are obvious questions over whether they have the conventional background for either position. But history shows that great offices of state are not always held by those with the most obvious background for the role.

The question is therefore not whether these appointments satisfy Westminster. It is whether this Cabinet understands the nature of the threat facing Britain and Europe - and whether it is prepared to respond with more than rhetoric.

Like many Britons, I am immensely proud of our country’s long history of confronting authoritarianism. But history offers no immunity from today’s threats and any complacency towards Russia in particular would be a profound strategic mistake. It is against this standard that these appointments should be judged.

The current Cabinet is undoubtedly a vocal ally of Ukraine, and every Prime Minister has rightly condemned Russian aggression. Burnham has also said he wants to be every bit as committed to President Zelenskyy as Keir Starmer was. That commitment is welcome, but political solidarity alone is not enough.

Wes Streeting inherits Defence at a moment when Britain’s armed forces must become larger, faster and technologically more agile. His first public intervention was to condemn Russia’s live-fire military exercise off Britain’s coast as “performative and irresponsible”. But the timing of these actions cannot be dismissed as coincidence. Moscow is not waiting for a new government to find its feet.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has never been confined to the battlefield. Since 2022, hybrid warfare has accelerated across Europe, and Britain remains firmly within Moscow’s sights.

Russian state television has repeatedly aired simulations and discussions of nuclear strikes against Britain, describing the UK as one of Moscow’s principal adversaries and threatening that it would receive “special attention” in the event of launch. But the threat does not begin or end with their rhetoric and is not confined to military exercises.

Over the past two decades, Russia has used a military-grade nerve agent on British soil. It has conducted sustained cyber attacks against government departments, critical infrastructure and private companies. It has repeatedly sought to interfere in democratic processes, conducted espionage against Parliament, academia, defence industries and research institutions, increased GPS jamming across Europe, and carried out increasingly aggressive military activity close to British airspace and territorial waters, and now has conducted naval exercises near the UK.

The issue has never been the language used by successive British governments. The issue has been the prolonged incapacity to match those words with sufficient investment in defence and national resilience.

Ed Miliband faces an equally difficult balancing act at the Foreign Office. Early indications suggest he intends to place renewed emphasis on international law, alliances and diplomacy while maintaining support for Ukraine.

But diplomacy without leverage has little value when dealing with the Kremlin. Moscow has repeatedly interpreted Western hesitation, procedural caution and endless debate as strategic weakness. The failure to respond decisively to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 helped convince Putin that escalation would carry manageable consequences.

Every delay in supporting Ukraine has cost lives. Every debate over escalation has been answered by Russia escalating first.

Neither Streeting nor Miliband arrives with an immediately obvious national security pedigree or background. That may prove an advantage for the Prime Minister rather than a weakness. It is not unusual for leaders to appoint trusted political figures to senior positions in order to encourage party loyalty rather than loyalty to the ministerial brief - but this doesn’t mean it cannot be effective in national security - in fact and there have been many such examples demonstrating just that. But, after the ministerial turbulence that affected Starmer’s government, Burnham may calculate that stability is necessary before confronting the more difficult decisions facing Britain’s defence posture.

Whether that buys him time, or simply delays decisions that can no longer be avoided, remains to be seen.

The danger for this government is not inexperience. Both appointments come with time around the cabinet table in varied positions. But the risk is allowing domestic priorities to once again consume political capital, while national security becomes just another department competing for Treasury funding when the threats are consuming.

Hinting of this potential trajectory was the new Prime Minister’s £2 bus fare cap dominating the news agenda, while Russia was conducting military exercises off the coast of one of Britain’s most strategically significant naval cities.

There is another uncomfortable reality.

Putin is not attempting to defeat Britain militarily today. He is attempting to convince Britain that defending itself is too expensive, too politically difficult and too divisive to sustain.

This government therefore has an opportunity to redefine what strength means.

Ukraine has demonstrated that modern wars are increasingly decided by industrial resilience, drone production, electronic warfare and the ability to innovate faster than an adversary. Ukrainian forces have repeatedly achieved dominance in areas many military planners considered impossible before 2022.

Deterrence is no longer measured solely by the number of tanks, ships or aircraft. Burnham’s Cabinet will inevitably be judged on growth, the NHS, the cost of living and domestic reform. But its ultimate responsibility is ensuring Britain has the resilience to withstand the threats of the modern world and this is how they should be judged.

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Megan Gittoes is an advisor to the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center in Kyiv.

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