Since Wes Streeting became the UK’s latest Secretary of State for Defence earlier this week, critics have claimed that he is unqualified for the role. Streeting replaces Dan Jarvis, a former British Army officer, who was defence secretary the six weeks before this.
The last Conservative defence secretary, Ben Wallace (also a former army officer) believes that replacing Jarvis with Streeting ‘shows a contempt for defence at a time [that] they need continuity, and someone who understands the new way of warfare and the men and women of the armed forces’. Lord Richard Dannatt, who was head of the British Army, told LBC that:
Defence is a complex portfolio… Streeting knows the square root of nothing about [it]. Jarvis could do a good job… because he understands the military extremely well… and was a successful army officer.
Both Wallace and Lord Dannatt believe that Jarvis would be a better defence secretary than Streeting because Jarvis spent 15 years in the army until 2011. (This, however, would hardly give him much experience of the new way of warfare.)
Whether Streeting succeeds or fails will ultimately be down to his leadership ability
