Is John Healey’s resignation a fatal blow for Keir Starmer?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. The most withering, excoriating resignation letter that you can imagine. That is a laser guided missile that he has fired straight at Downing Street and it's hit its target. John Healy has no ambitions to be the Prime Minister. He wanted to put the British Armed Forces on a solid footing with European Armed Forces. So when someone like him goes, you just think, oh my God, it must be rotten. At the core. The whole timetable has massively expedited now. I mean, literally, I think it's like watching everything happen on fast forward. This day, we might be seen as the moment where it all collapsed on Keir Starmer.

0:43UK Defence Minister John Healy has resigned from his position. This is just reaching us news from Westminster. The UK Defence Minister John Healy has resigned. let's go to deborah haynes and speak to our correspondent about this developing story our defense and security editor um deborah the first thing that comes to mind is the defense investment plan but what do you know i mean he's he's actually published um posted a letter on social media his resignation letter and i think that is um really what we should read his his own words obviously an absolutely extraordinary development. This has come out of the blue.

1:25The resignation of the Defence Secretary, John Healy, and the most withering, excoriating resignation letter that you can imagine, accusing Keir Starmer of having been unable and the Treasury unwilling to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country. He accuses Keir Starmer of offering money that falls well short of what is required to keep the country safe. What does this mean for Starmer's future and for the country as a whole? Welcome to The News Agents.

2:08It's John. It's Maitlis. And this letter is quite something. And you think of the resignation letters that there have been down the ages and the decisive effects that they have had. And I suppose the one you'd compare this to is Geoffrey Howe's resignation that led to the fall of Thatcher because it seemed such a kind of unlikely voice that would be expressing such displeasure. And here we have John Healy, as you say, this loyal, dependable figure who was seen as the absolute safe pair of hands in the cabinet who kind of rose above party divisions and ideology and was just getting on with the job of the defence of the nation to write such a letter about the failure of the government to come to grips with this defence investment plan.

2:56So last year we had a strategic defence review that George Robertson led and presented about what the government needed to do. And this was going to be, well, OK, this is how we're going to pay for it and where the money is going to come from and how we're going to invest in the defence of the nation. And this has been waited for and waited for and waited for. And in his letter, John Healy sets out how it has just gone on and on without any conclusion. And that when the conclusion was apparently getting near, John Healy felt, hang on, Keir, you're pulling a fast one on me. And so John Healy has left the government in what seems to me to be an enormous blow to Starmer when there was so little chance of him surviving anyway.

3:45Yeah, there is a very good chance that we will look back on today, the 11th of June, and say, was that the moment that it really ended for Keir Starmer? Clearly, there has been a lot happening up to this point. We have an absolutely critical by-election next Thursday. But to have your own defence secretary, a man who has been absolutely loyal and at your side for the last two years of government, turning around and saying this is on you, I think is almost impossible to bounce back from. John Healy, I have been told, said to the Prime Minister that 0.08 % of a GDP increase to defence would not keep the country safe.

4:34And he got the full offer on Monday afternoon. I'm told that Number 10 had tried to rush and publish this defence plan on Thursday. Healy said, look, if we rush this through, the plan is too risky. It needs to be properly finalised. It's too important. So I've been told that this headline figure, 13.5 billion, was what the department was after. In fact, it was only 10 billion pounds in real cash. And the phrase that was used to me was treasury trickery. In other words, they'd sort of fudged the numbers. They tried to sort of round up. It wasn't really coming out like that. and the sense that Healy had was that it wouldn't end the hollowing out and it would delay key transformation.

5:19And to be fair, he has, as we know, consistently said the Prime Minister over the last couple of years, last few months, look for credible alternative funding options like the 17 other European nations and that is what he kind of made very clear to Keir Starmer. You know, you were all in this together. You went to NATO last year. You pledged it. You said you're going to do it. Keir Starmer has sort of sold his stature as being this very good statesman on the world stage, you know, understanding Trump's need, understanding his place in Europe. He sort of played that role brilliantly. But what he says is that the prime minister didn't even put a date on the 3%.

6:01The Treasury was trying to force the MOD to be able to plan just up to sort of 20, 34, 35. and Healy said, look, this is going to breach what you've just promised NATO. It's a commitment that the PM not only made at NATO, but subsequently reaffirmed to MPs in the House of Commons in April. And I think at this point, Healy was like, he knows what has to be done. He's said it out loud. He's reconfirmed it. And then when it comes down to me, that it's mealy mouth. The money isn't there. The timing isn't there. The date isn't there. And I think this is crucial as well, that Healy had agreed to the strategic defending review on the basis that it could be changed.

6:43It might need to be accelerated. That was part of the thing. If circumstances change, if funding changes, it has to change too. And we know that NATO has now said we have to be kind of more ready for conflict than they did. But the PM hasn't shifted. So it's that whole thing, you know, going back to the incrementalism. When the facts change, things have to change. And I think this is the point where Healy's got to a point of maximum frustration, which has come out in that letter. Well, look, we are at that stage, you know, to kind of go to another resignation letter, which of Norman Lamont, when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer to John Major.

7:19And he said, you're in office, but not in power. You feel that about Keir Starmer now? Look, it was Keir Starmer who went to the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, stands on a platform, talks about the strategic defence review, talks about the vital importance of investing in defence. And this is what is going to happen. And what's happened is it looks like Keir Starmer has gone round to the various government departments, said, well, can you chip in a billion here for this defence investment plan? And they go, no, bugger off. Can you? No, get lost. What about you? Will you give us a no?

7:53And Keir Starmer is unable to enforce his will in government. And this is a failure. I was talking to a senior government source as well, Emily, who said to me, this is just such a failure in managing a relationship. I mean, John Healy is not some hot headed kind of person who flies off the handle and storms out of meetings and slams doors. he is mild-mannered he is determined about the threat that this country faces and how the defenses of our country need to be improved and we've seen that over the past few months you know the whole farce of HMS Dragon going out to the eastern Mediterranean and it not being ready and then it you know and that being the only ship that we can put to sea that will do that stuff So I think that, look, you know, John Healy has been this moderate, mild man of man who has been driven to the point of resignation by the failure of number 10 and number 11.

8:52And although they may be short of kit at the Ministry of Defence right now, that is a laser guided missile that he has fired straight at Downing Street and it's hit its target. And it's hard to see what emerges from the rubble of this. We've been speaking all this time about, oh, well, make a field by election next week. This could be the decisive moment in Keir Starmer's future. I think that taking us all by surprise, it's John Healy today. As you say, this day will might be seen as the moment where it all collapsed on Keir Starmer. I think it's important to caveat some of these discussions, though, around what we always know about defence spending and in particular the MOD.

9:33And I was talking to somebody who I'd say is a bit of a grown up in the room who's sort of, you know, not just sort of open eyed at all this stuff in terms of Starmacritic. or Stam a critic, but they did put to me that the trouble with defence is twofold. One, if you want it to all come from British made industry and British based kind of work and employment, then the procurement process is an absolute nightmare. In other words, British companies can charge what they want. You know, they can slow it down. They can do it on their terms. There's very few other people who are in sort of competition with them.

10:12And so the whole thing gets massively more expensive and massively delayed because you keep on coming back to this rather sort of patriotic position, understandably, that we want Britain to make its own defence. The other thing this person said was that war has changed, you know, and they said it was changed. It's beyond recognisable in the last five years. And then they said, actually, in the last year, you might have tried to procure, you know, armed vehicles, tanks. And you suddenly look round at Ukraine and you go, shit, actually, we just need drones. You know, we need we need millions of drones.

10:47Why did we spend all this time, you know, on the armored tank? I mean, to the point about do we send the wrong frigate at the wrong time or we haven't got the frigate? There was a time probably 10 years ago when we didn't think we need frigates. Now suddenly we need frigates. There will be a time when we've commissioned, you know, armoured vehicles and the whole shape of war has changed beyond recognition. And so I think there is this extra pressure, which is that, you know, the Conservatives, frankly, had underspent. We know that they had underspent on defence. They clearly saw that it would all be over before they had to sort of recorrect things.

11:19So part of it is this government trying to pick up the pieces. and I guess the other part is you know is is Kirsten saying well of course the principal you know role of any prime minister is to keep the country safe right classic but then what what does that mean what does that actually mean in terms of the shape of the hole and if we plug that hole you know does it just grow even bigger do we have to start well yes you've done that for armoured vehicles you've done that for you know sort of foot soldiers what about the drones that There is this sense, and I think it comes from the Treasury, that the MOD is never going to be happy with the amount you're spending.

11:57It's never going to be a big enough amount of money, because if it just keeps coming back to that whole question of like, we need to keep the country safe. I mean, we get it. But how much does that cost? How much is that? Is it possible to spend? Of course. And look, the arguments about the way procurement is done in Britain, and there are all sorts of examples of tanks, of armoured personnel carriers, of the rifles that the British army are issued with. All of those things, there have been absolute nightmares of procurement that have taken place over the past where huge amounts of money have been wasted in that process.

12:32I suppose the bigger argument is that is taking place is, you know, look, there is a perfectly reasonable argument to say, OK, what's happened in Europe with Ukraine is bloody awful. But I don't think Russia poses a threat to the rest of Europe. Or you take the view that actually we're all under threat now and therefore we've got to take defence spending seriously. Once you've said, and Keir Starmer completely accepts the argument, that what has happened in Ukraine could be a warning to other Baltic states. It could then go to Poland. What about Germany? And then is the whole of Europe potentially in line from Russian attack?

13:07If you take the view that actually our defence forces are undermanned and under equipped right now. And this is something that needs to change in short order, not just because of Russia and Ukraine, but because of the position of America right now, where it seems very ambivalent about the Western security umbrella. Then, by God, you've got to gear up. And, you know, when people start talking about national service as being something that potentially could happen, you think, yeah, this might happen. Well, then you need to have the military hardware. And you're absolutely right. I mean, of course, what has happened in Ukraine has totally changed what people's theory is about warfare and what you need and what the military hardware is.

13:51And, yeah, you can have an aircraft carrier that costs billions of dollars and it might have the most sophisticated defences. But if it is swarmed by a whole bunch of one hundred and fifty dollar drones, the drones are probably going to win. And therefore, you've got this sitting duck of a target is sitting in the sea that has cost you billions. So there are undoubtedly changes that are taking place. And I think the Strategic Defence Review and what Healy was trying to do. And that is why this is utterly catastrophic for Starmer and for Rachel Reeves that John Healy has said enough. I can't stand this any longer and I'm quitting.

14:31And this ahead of a NATO summit, this ahead of a G7 summit, at a time when Britain is trying to show leadership on this stuff, about what is the future defence of Europe look like, and sitting with Emmanuel Macron and, you know, and Chancellor MERS and saying, we've got to step up, we've got to take responsibility. And now his defence secretary has walked over something as fundamental as the accusation in the letter, you're not keeping the country safe. There is a counterintuitive way of reading what has happened today. We're going to explore that and where this leaves Keir Starmer.

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15:59Look, I think the position that Healy has taken, yes, came out of the blue today. We weren't expecting him to resign. But in a way, it echoes so much of the conversation that Cabinet has been having over the last few weeks and months. Just two weeks ago, we saw Jess Phillips resigning and the word she used in her own letter was incrementalism. incrementalism. Keir Starmer knows what he has to do to keep children safe online. One measure could keep 90 % of our kids much safer online. What is stopping him? And last Friday, Lewis was speaking to Wes Streeting, who was speaking specifically about this issue of defence spending and really sort of talked about it face on as being the thing that was staring at Starmer that he still managed somehow to swerve.

16:49As I said in my letter, where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift. And that is reflected in both the mistakes, but it's also reflected in the indecision. Take the defence investment plan. We know that we are living in a dangerous world. We know that our armed forces were left less well-equipped than they should have been by our predecessors. And we know that the level of investment needed is hard against the backdrop of the state of the public finances and the economy. So there are choices and trade-offs to be made. We asked George Robertson, former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General, to write the plan, to identify the need.

17:32He has done it. The plan is there. John Healy has worked on it. He's a great Defence Secretary. the question is how do you pay for it and there are only so many options you can go for there are only so many choices why is the plan not published because of indecision i mean that was the same way as who once described government as a kind of maintenance department you know you can't just keep sort of cranking things and pressing things and assuming that it will all be okay for another 24 hours without actually doing any of the major investing in it. And I guess the point about John Healy, and I think that his resignation really shocked his colleagues today, I mean, as a sort of headline act.

18:15But if you think about it, and I think this is where it does tie in to the Maker Field by-election and to Keir Starmer, there is a chance that he would not have been long in that job anyway, right? That he would have said, if Andy Burnham wins, and everything's up in the air, Burnham, you know, comes into Downing Street, clears out all the kind of the dead wood, as it were, everyone who has been part of not making it work properly up till now, brings in his own people. So is there a part of Healy? And I'm not pretending that he's playing political games, I genuinely don't think he is. He seems to be one of the most straight talking of all the cabinet members of all.

18:54But is something going on where he thinks, look, I have to be part of the solution, not the problem. I have to get myself away from this and say, I understand that this isn't working, this hasn't been working, that this man at the top has not been allowing it to work in order for him to maybe come back in a couple of months and pick up where he left off in a job that he clearly adores. You know, there is something about having to get away from the mess in order to come back in. I'm not sure I buy that. I know John Healy a bit. He's been around a long time. I just don't think that he would have done this because he's got his eye on what Andy Burnham's next government might look like and how he might fit into it.

19:39I think this is just born of the frustration of what I've heard from so many government ministers now saying that he just can't take a decision. he's you know on the defense thing he thinks he thinks it ought to be for the ministers from different government departments to sit amongst themselves and come up with a conclusion and just present it to him that they've we've sorted this out it's all right we'll get the extra 13 billion for defense by doing this that and the other it's always going to be driven by the prime minister and i think it shows his lack of political deafness his inability to manage relationships And this thing that I keep hearing is that Keir Starmer never talks to anybody.

20:21He never has a kind of, you know, look, let's chat about what this problem is and how we're going to solve it and what's the best way. He reads briefing papers, but doesn't talk to anyone. And I think that this is just political ineptitude on a grand scale of what has happened, that you end up with John Healy deciding I can stand it no longer. And I suspect that John Healy, you know, he had the confidence of his other cabinet colleagues. They speak very highly of him. he had the confidence of the mod he had the confidence of the defense industries they all thought he was doing a good job so i've got to say that i think when andy burnham comes in i wouldn't have thought that john healy would have been the first for the high jump when if you know if andy burnham is trying to clear out dead wood and he's trying to make spaces for some of the people who he thinks he owes favors to yeah i thought john healy would have been one of the safest people to remain in that job, given the sensitivities of NATO, the international framework for things at the moment.

21:17And therefore, I'd have thought that, you know, I think John Healy's just taken this decision because, you know, yeah, sure, Makerfield is coming next week. Well, maybe it's a shot across the bowels in that case. I mean, I don't think Burnham has spoken very much, if at all, about defence, certainly in this election campaign. I mean, some people would say he knows less about defence than Reeves and Starmer. So, you know, maybe Healy's getting in there early and saying, wake up whoever is in charge of this now wake up if you want me to do this job I have to be allowed to do it properly and yeah maybe it is a sort of siren call but I guess the thing is I mean to Starmer's own position now and to the timetable that this leaves us with if you were drawing the sort of inner circle you know the sort of Venn diagram as it were who is really next to Starmer you would probably draw I would have thought sort of four faces you would have had David Lammy you'd have Darren Jones his sort of personal chief secretary to the prime minister you'd have the housing minister Steve Reid the loyalist of the loyal and you would have Healy and I'm not saying the others are disloyal in any way but I'm saying that they represent the inner circle the inner core don't they and when one of those is gone and not just gone in a kind of I'd like to spend more time with my family but gone in a kind of you are useless way I think that's now looking so shaky that I don't see how there is a leadership challenge.

22:43I don't see how Starmer takes on. I mean, let's imagine for now that Burnham wins Makerfield and of course he might not. But if he does, there was this whole kind of idea that there would be some kind of, you know, challenge and Starmer would say, yes, I'm not going anywhere and I don't have to have the 81 names. You have to have the 81 names. Some protracted sort of ordeal over the summer and beyond. I just can't see that happening now because John Healy's just said it out loud. He's written it all down and he's right on the inside. He's, if you like, the ultimate whistleblower who says, I've been in the middle of this.

23:19It's not working. And I don't like the trickery. You know, I don't like the fact this man can't make up his mind and I don't like the trickery of the numbers. And I think that if Burnham wins literally a week today, tonight, then we are probably looking at some kind of announcement incredibly quickly, like within a sort of, I don't know, I would expect there to be a change of guard within a month. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is real unknown territory. I think why John Healy is so toxic and radioactive and utterly dangerous for Keir Starmer in a way that West Streeting is not as much is that we knew we know that West Streeting is ambitious, that he wants to be the prime minister, that he's got his own game to play.

24:08and therefore, you know, the positioning of when he resigned and, you know, was this the right time? And could I launch an early challenge? And have I got the votes? Have I got the 81 votes? You know, maybe I haven't, but I might get there. That was all factored in to Wes Streeting's resignation. John Healy has no ambitions to be the prime minister. He has the ambitions to be the defence secretary and do a good job at a difficult time when the whole relationships of Western security are up for grabs and everything is changing. and we are in a period of flux and he wanted to put the British armed forces on a solid footing with European armed forces he had no further ambitions other than to do that so when someone like him goes you just think oh my god it must be rotten at the core and I think that that is why it's so dangerous and I think that to your point Emily about you know how long does Starmer go on can you really see just close your eyes can you see Keir Starmer delivering the leader's speech at the Labour Party conference at the end of September this is what we're going to do as a country he'll be on his way out he's surely got to be on his way out before then and a new leader in place I agree with you I think the whole timetable has massively expedited now I mean literally I think it's like watching everything happen on fast forward as of about midday today.

25:28I mean, there's one thing I would say, which is that the MOD does occasionally have this sort of quality of institutional capture. You know, if you are the defence secretary, the armed forces love you as long as you're, you know, promising to keep them safe. The kind of industries love you as long as you're promising to build British. You know, the sort of generals love you as long as you're promising more spending on defence. I do think this is, you know, it is an occupational hazard that once you're inside the MOD, as long as you're saying, you know, I'm going to go out and get you more money, of course everyone loves you.

26:00And in a way, that's an easier role to play than turning around and saying there isn't any. I mean, it is entirely possible that under a Burnham, you know, putative government, Burnham actually doesn't care that much about defence and has even less inclination to spend on it than Starmer. We don't know, right? We don't really know what is going on there because he frankly hasn't said very much about it at all. And so, yeah, who knows? Maybe he put somebody in who turns around and says, we can't do what we wanted, you know, whatever we said to NATO. But, you know, look. I mean, that's the Sanchez.

26:33That's the Spanish model, right? Sorry, but it's not our top priority. And 10 years ago, that argument would have had force and validity that the generals, all they want is increased spending. They want more kit. They want more officers. They want more this. They want more that. That has always been the complaint about the MOD. we have had the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. We have seen the threat that that poses and we've also seen Donald Trump in the White House utterly ambivalent about NATO and Article 5. And that does present huge logistical difficulties because it's not just British defence manufacturers.

27:06We used to buy most of our kit from America. That was the big place where we bought stuff from. You know, you look at the Trident nuclear missiles, they're run by America. We don't have autonomous control over Trident And even though we spend billions and billions each year, it's all American care. Well, if we're not going to be yoked to America for our defence, then we need to start changing it. And so therefore, I think the defence portfolio undoubtedly, you know, just the facts on the ground have changed it and made it more important that the defence of the nation is vital. And so when John Healy, someone like that goes, I don't think he was it was a case of institutional capture.

27:44I think it was something that he was responding to the changing events in the world, which I think that broadly speaking has cross party agreement from, you know, from. I totally agree. I mean, just his resignation has fielded lots of very flowing attributes about his work from all the parties. And I think it's very easy to say we want to keep our country safe and defences where we must go. And clearly the risk from Russia has got much worse and Trump is less engaged. I don't deny any of that. I'm just saying, I guess I'm posing the question that, you know, what has Andy Burnham said on the stump?

28:20He's basically said it's about the north, not just the south. It's about levelling up. It's about industry. Now, if you can tie industry to defence spending, great. But actually, if you're Burnham now and you're talking to people of Makerfield, you're actually talking about things that are right inside today and next week and next month. And it's harder to then say to people, this is a big threat that's coming. We've got to spend this much money in 2032, because that's not the politician that he's present himself as. He's present himself as somebody who wants to affect change on the doorstep today.