When a defense minister resigns, it is bad news for any government. When a respected and doggedly loyal one like Labour’s defense Secretary, John Healey, storms out, it is catastrophic—especially when he claims he was being forced to make Britain “less safe.”
Healey’s Thursday resignation letter places the blame firmly on Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whom he accuses of reneging on his promises to deliver a credible defense Investment Plan (DIP) to rebuild Britain’s enfeebled armed forces. A figure of £28 billion was required. That gradually got whittled down to £18 billion by the Treasury salami slicers.
Then on Monday, Healey was told that the pot had shrunk to £13.5 billion, which turned out to be only £10 billion in real cash terms. He said the financial settlement fell well short of what is required “at this dangerous time.” His letter went on: “I am being forced to make decisions that would reduce the readiness of our armed forces, increase the risk to personnel, and could make the country less safe.”
This is the most damaging resignation of any defense Secretary certainly since Michael Heseltine resigned from Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet in 1986 over the Westland helicopter affair. And it comes when the threats to the UK are significantly greater than they were when Thatcher sent a Task Force to the Falklands. That would be impossible today with Britain’s depleted military.
Indeed, in March, during the Iran conflict, Britain was humiliated when it was unable to send a destroyer, HMS Dragon, to protect British citizens at the RAF base in Akrotiri in Cyprus after an Iranian drone attack. Deployment took three weeks. The Brits had to rely on help from the French frigate Languedoc in the meantime.
The DIP was supposed to help prevent embarrassments like that happening in future. Today, Healey was supposed to be joining the Australian deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, for a joint press conference at HM Naval Base in Portsmouth to launch the much-delayed plan. But it was cancelled at the last minute.
“The delay to the DIP had become an unfunny running joke,” said Professor Kevin Rowlands of the Royal United Services Institute, “but the decision of the defense secretary to resign is not the least bit amusing.”
With unintended irony, Number 10 responded to Healey’s resignation by releasing a statement saying: “This country is safer because of the decisions Keir Starmer has made.”
It was speculated that Healey would be replaced by his junior, the Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, but Carns followed his boss out the door later the same day, noting in his resignation letter that “The machinery of government itself has been left to decay.”
If defense chiefs are livid, there is more than a whiff of rebellion in the Labour cabinet. One of the rivals in Labour’s putative leadership race, Wes Streeting, put the boot into the Prime Minister directly today by saying: “Every word of [Healey’s] warning needs to be heeded.”
Streeting resigned three weeks ago from his post as Health Secretary, saying he had lost confidence in Starmer. This could be catching. Comparisons are being drawn with what happened to the Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson when his cabinet fell apart in 2022.
It’s all about how to safeguard Europe now that America is in withdrawal. Starmer delivered a supposedly landmark speech at the Munich defense conference in February, promising that Britain would step up to the NATO plate. He pledged to spend 3 percent of GDP during the next parliament and 3.5 percent by 2035. These commitments are now politely described as toast.
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who had imposed the cut, evidently thought the ultra-loyal Healey would dutifully swallow it. But Healey gagged and threw a hand grenade into the cabinet room a week before the crucial Makerfield by-election.
Now, a conspiracy theorist might speculate that Starmer would not have been unhappy to see Healey resign. It means his biggest rival for the Labour leadership, the Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, will be forced onto the defensive with only a week to go until the Makerfield ballot, which he is expected to win.
Burnham has already outlined big spending plans on infrastructure, nationalization, and social care. Now every journalist will ask him one question: Will he find the money to keep the country safe? His promises not to increase taxes looked pretty threadbare before this crisis. Now he is going to have to explain where this £28 billion is to come from on top of the £40-odd billion he has already committed to borrowing.
But if this were a Machiavellian plan by Starmer, it is not a very clever one. Healey’s suggestion that the Labour prime minister has risked the nation’s security is about as damaging as it gets. And he is undoubtedly correct. The British Army is more of a costume department than a fighting force. It has dwindled to 70,000 regulars, barely enough to fill a football stadium.
Tanks, ships and munitions are in desperately short supply, not least because of donations to Ukraine. The delayed and unusable Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicle, which vibrated so much it made soldiers ill, was only the latest in a catalogue of procurement scandals.
The £28 billion over four years was the absolute minimum defense chiefs believed was necessary to begin the reconstruction and meet the new threats in a dangerous world. But Healey was told that the government could not afford to make deep cuts in spending or break its promises, yet again, not to increase taxes on “ordinary working people.”
“Let’s be clear on what John is asking for, cuts to schools and hospitals,” said Treasury sources. Either that or unacceptable tax increases (which Starmer has not actually ruled out). But there is another area of public spending which the Treasury was rather shy about identifying today.
As we learned recently, the UK now spends more on welfare than it raises from income taxes: £333 billion. Surely, say the Tories, there are economies to be made to the benefits bill. They claim Labour is addicted to welfare and terrified of losing the votes of the millions of claimants in the British welfare army.
As Pat McFadden, the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, put it in a revealing text released last week as part of the Mandelson Files: “Every meeting I have [with Labour MPs] is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’.” If Keir Starmer falls after next week’s election, that could provide his epitaph. Not so much guns before butter, but welfare before warships.
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