Healey Resigns as Defence Secretary in Major Blow to Starmer
The prime minister loses another close cabinet minister.
Defence Secretary John Healey resigned on Thursday, saying Prime Minister Keir Starmer had been “unable, and the Treasury unwilling” to commit the resources the nation needs to protect itself.
His resignation letter did not include the usual language used for cabinet departures. There was no careful diplomatic prose that allows a prime minister to manage the optics of losing a colleague – instead, he wrote in plain terms: the Defence Investment Plan that was presented to him this week would force him to make decisions that “could make the country less safe.” He added that he had no other option.
This is not a resignation over scandal, or political posturing, or even an ideological disagreement. Those kinds of departures are damaging, but they are, in Westminster terms, containable. A minister goes. The news cycle turns. A new name appears at the despatch box. This is something different. Healey – one of the most respected figures in Westminster – has looked at the funding settlement his own government has offered him and decided that accepting it would be a dereliction of duty. He has chosen the armed forces over the cabinet table, and that choice is the indictment.
The proposal would have seen defence spending rise from 2.6% of GDP to 2.68% by 2030 – that 0.08% increase was seen as being nowhere near enough by Healey. He wanted the figure to reach 3% by 2030 and then 3.5% in 2035. It means that Starmer now needs to find someone willing to become defence secretary when their predecessor has just left saying there is not enough money to keep the country safe.
It will not be easy to find someone willing to stand at the despatch box and make the case for a settlement that their predecessor refused to accept – especially given the fact that there is no guarantee that Starmer will be in Number 10 for much longer.
This also potentially complicates next week’s by-election in Makerfield. Andy Burnham is campaigning in the constituency, positioning himself as the alternative Labour can offer, so he can directly challenge the prime minister, but this resignation hands Reform UK and Nigel Farage an argument they have been rehearsing for some time: that under Labour, Britain is not safe. Reform will not waste the gift. In the final days of a contest that was already hostile, Healey’s words are the fuel their campaign needed.
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