Ed Miliband said he does not regret blocking UK intervention in Syria when he was Labour leader after Wes Streeting suggested the UK’s “hesitation” allowed the Assad regime to last for longer.
The two senior Cabinet ministers have expressed differing views on the Commons vote on the principle of UK military action in Syria in 2013.
The Energy Secretary, who instructed his party to vote against it when he was opposition leader, said he stood by the decision with hindsight.
Mr Miliband said that “the view that some people seem to be expressing about history is just wrong”.
Downing Street insisted the current Government’s position on Syria is “very clear”.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has fled to Moscow after rebels launched a major offensive against the government, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule of the country.
In a close vote in 2013, MPs rejected the principle of UK military action to deter Assad’s use of chemical weapons, which ruled out the possibility of Britain conducting joint air strikes with the US.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting was asked about the vote on the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday night.
“With hindsight, I think we can say, looking back on the events of 2013 that the hesitation of this country and the United States create a vacuum that Russia moved into and kept Assad in power for much longer,” he said.
Asked if he regretted blocking the move, Mr Miliband told Sky News: “No, I don’t.”
He said the question at the time was whether to have a “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 believe that in the light of the Iraq war, we could never send British troops back into combat unless we were absolutely clear about what a plan was, including what an exit strategy was.”
He argued that those who say bombing Syria in 2013 would have led to the collapse of the Assad regime were “obviously wrong” because Donald Trump’s strikes on the country in 2017 and 2018 did not end his rule.
“So 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 question at the time was not “was Assad a brutal dictator?” but rather whether British military intervention was “the right thing to do”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
It was put to him that the intervention would have involved air strikes rather than sending troops.
“Air strikes would involve British troops. Of course it would, and we didn’t know what we were going to get drawn into,” he said.
A Number 10 spokesman said: “I think the Government’s position on Syria is very clear. Our priority is the safety of civilians and the peaceful transfer of power. We continue to engage with allies as you would expect and our partners in the region on how to achieve a political solution.”
The spokesman added that “obviously I’m not going to comment on something that alludes to a period pre this Government.”
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Streeting were not MPs at the time of the vote.
