For those who keep up with the news, yet another resignation should hardly come as a surprise.
Defence Secretary John Healey is the sixth minister to leave Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government since May, and, at such a tumultuous time in UK politics, it may seem like a relatively insignificant loss.
Historically, Defence Secretaries have hardly been heavy-hitters within government, and the UK military rarely comes up in wider politics. But John Healey’s resignation reveals quite a lot about the state of the UK government.
Having survived a tumultuous month in politics as well as potential leadership elections, now was the time for the party to unite and for Keir Starmer to project strength going into these new campaigns.
Instead, yet another minister is out the door and that departure reveals a lot about Keir Starmer’s government, as well as about the future of the Labour Party. So let’s examine why this mundane exit from a relatively unknown minister is actually quite a significant blow to the party and government.
The state of the UK military
John Healey hasn’t left because he’s lost confidence in Keir Starmer or because of a general discontent with his leadership. Instead, he has left over a very specific issue: defence spending.
In his resignation statement, Healey says that Keir Starmer was “unable” to provide resources to “defend the country at this time of rising threats” despite Starmer’s commitment to increase military expenditure to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035
Healey himself explained, however, that the vast majority of that funding was to come at the end of the programme, with defence spending only rising by 0.8 per cent by 2030. Healey’s view was that most of that funding increase should come in the first two years and that there should be a better roadmap in place as to how that increase would occur.
All that is a rather long-winded way of saying that Healey believed these proposals to be largely empty promises that were never actually going to be enacted.
Starmer is far from the first Prime Minister to neglect defence spending. Ever since the end of the Cold War, our defence expenditure has been falling considerably from roughly 4.5 per cent in 1990 to around 2.6 per cent today.
But in light of Trump’s threats and the general instability of the world, members of NATO agreed to increase their military spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035, a promise that Keir Starmer also agreed to yet, as Healey claims, wasn’t too committed to.
The UK was once of the most committed members of NATO, being the 4th largest spender by GDP in 2014. Today, they’ve dropped to 14th and the state of military defence spending has united everyone from the Lib Dems to Reform UK in their sympathy for Healey’s concerns.
What Healey’s exit means
What surprised most in the political scene was not that a minister had resigned but the fact that it was John Healey, of all people, who departed.
Largely unknown in wider politics, John Healey has been a consistent member of the Labour Shadow cabinet since 2010 and became Starmer’s Shadow Defence Secretary all the way back in 2022.
In short, he was a Labour Party loyalist, and his departure has shocked many within the party. It represents just how far the Labour Party have fallen since their electoral sweep in 2024 and suggests a party where even decades-long members are losing faith.
Aside from that, Healey’s departure has also reignited conversations around how tenable Starmer’s leadership is and once again has people questioning how long he can continue in office.
Even worse, it’s allowed the opposition parties to attack Starmer’s military spending plans and point to Healey’s exit as an example of genuine policy failure on an issue which is rapidly becoming crucial to the government.
That Starmer let this happen, not even a week away from the crucial Makerfield by-election is indicative of how his government has functioned over the past 2 years.
Keir Starmer’s Leadership Style
John Healey left over a governmental disagreement, one simply stemming from a lack of military funding. Considering that increasing this funding was a key pledge of Starmer’s government, Starmer could’ve easily agreed.
But he didn’t. Instead, it became yet another kicked can. Yet another big pledge that sounds good for a headline but, in practice, does virtually nothing. Starmer was calling it “The biggest increase in military funding since the Cold War”, but it only became yet another empty promise on a decade-long timeline.
This, seemingly, is what Starmer believes will get the people back on his side, but his attempts to try and please everyone have so far completely failed. In many ways, it feels as though Starmer has promised the world by increasing spending on so many departments, all without increasing the deficit.
These promises have entirely blown-up in his face because no one, not even ministers, take these pledges seriously anymore. The entirely predictable scandal that has occurred in the aftermath is even more evidence of Starmer’s lack of foresight.
So why does Healey’s leaving matter? Well, in many ways, it matters only because we’ve been here before. Yet another minister resigns, yet another promise unfulfilled and yet another challenge for Starmer’s leadership. Little, clearly, has been learned from the past months, and if the May elections weren’t enough to wake Labour up, clearly nothing will be.
Now, we await the Makerfield by-election and based on the fact that it’s between Reform and Andy Burnham, his biggest rival within Labour, things can seemingly only get worse for Starmer.
Featured Image Credit: House of Parliament Official Portrait
2nd year History and Journalism Student
Politics Editor and Head of Podcasting
Also writes on Substack @jamesmcintyre609599
