542. Starmer Loses His Defence Secretary: What Next?

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1:26Welcome to a live episode of The Rest of Polities with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And why are we doing a live episode today, just ahead of the kickoff of the World Cup? Because, out of the blue, breaking news, Defence Secretary John Healey resigned from the Cabinet. Worse for Keir Starmer, he did so at a time when the Prime Minister is facing a possible leadership challenge in the coming weeks or months, with the likeliest challenger, Andy Burnham, exactly one week away now from the by-election that may see his return to Parliament. And perhaps most devastating of all, John Healy makes clear in his resignation letter that leadership is the issue.

2:08This line, which I suspect hit Keir Starmer quite hard, you have been unable writes john healy and the treasury has been unwilling to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country so he's got rachel reeves as well as keir starmer in his sights and he's going down fighting i guess the issue is defense spending more particularly what's known as the defense investment plan which he thought had been broadly agreed some time ago which was been sitting on the prime minister's desk amid some very very tough negotiations. So we've got a few immediate questions. Who replaces him? When does the defence investment plan get published?

2:46And Lindsay Hoyle, the parliamentary speaker, exploded today at the idea it might be tomorrow when most MPs are away. And I guess it also begs the question, where does this leave Keir Starmer on the authority front? So Rory, where would you like to start?

3:01Rory Stewart:I mean, I really want to get into the politics of this with you, and it's something that you'll know much more about than me. And one of the things we were talking about just before we came up on air is might John Healy be thinking about himself as a future prime minister? Could he be positioning himself for leadership? I think the question of who the next defence secretary is is slightly less interesting because it strikes me there'll be a bit of a lame duck anyway, particularly if Andy Burnham's going into the running imminently. But what I want to do is just remind people a little bit about what the big conversation's about.

3:35Rory Stewart:So the big conversation is famously about the fact that following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, people have become more and more conscious the fact that the world is getting a much more unstable place. And that the United States has made it very clear that they're certainly not going to financially continue to bail out their European allies, but they may actually not even come to NATO's assistance. So there's huge pressure on all countries, of which Britain is probably the leading example in Europe, maybe along with France, Europe's leading military power, to step up. And the honest truth of the matter is, they've talked about a 2.5 % expenditure, and then there's a target of 3%, and then there's a 3.5%, and then there's a 5%.

4:26Rory Stewart:I remember all this because I was chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, so we spent a lot of time going for this. I was very proud that we led a campaign to get to 2%. But what nobody was quite clear enough about at the time when we were getting up to 2%, which is what Trump was pushing for in 2016, is 2 % is nowhere near enough for Britain to begin to do the range of things it wants to do. And just very quickly, again, for the audience, there are basically three types of British military that you could have. You could have the sort of nuclear Britain, which is broadly speaking what we're actually doing.

5:04Rory Stewart:We're going to be spending probably 18 % or even perhaps a quarter of our entire defense expense just on our nuclear weapons. the new generation of submarines, the new generation of nuclear weapons. And that's essentially a bet that says our biggest single guarantee against Russia invading us is that we have these nuclear weapons that we can fire. So that would be a military that spent an enormous amount of nuclear weapons and then had some special forces and cyber. Second type of army you could get, well, a sort of Ukraine European land army. And that would involve Britain maybe having some tanks, but would certainly involve it having massive stockpiles of missiles.

5:42Rory Stewart:We've got some exquisite missiles, but we've got very few of them. Some of them we've given to Ukraine, many of them we haven't bought. We don't have good surface-to-air protection. So if you wanted to get yourself in a position for a Ukraine-style war, you would have to buy an enormous number of things from tanks to missiles, which we basically weren't planning for since 1989, because we assumed there wasn't going to be another European war. And then the third thing is to keep doing what we were talking about through the 90s, 2000s, 2010s, which is global Britain. And that's aircraft carriers, that's heading off to the Pacific, that's playing around with AUKUS, that's deployable expeditionary forces.

6:21Rory Stewart:We almost certainly can't afford even one of those. We definitely can't afford all three. And it's in the middle of this that John Healy has found himself back over the years. Oh, it is pretty grim. When you look at the numbers of size of armed forces, equipment and kit that's available to us, this is why the defence spending issue is so fraught. Because the truth is, everybody accepts that we need to spend more defence. But other ministers have fought very hard to protect their own budgets. And John Healy's clearly decided, this is not enough. I can't carry on being the person speaking up for strong defence if I don't believe that we're actually providing it.

6:55Because that's why that line was so devastating, because there's no more, there's really very few things I can think you can say of a prime minister and you're not keeping the country safe, which is, of course, what Kemi Bade, not the Troy leader, has leapt upon. I think you talk about the politics of this. I mean, I wouldn't rule out John Healy as thinking that he might be a leadership contender. I mean, John Healy is a very interesting guy. He's been around for a long time. And he's been a minister or shadow minister pretty much all of his career. He came in in 1997 when we won the first of Tony Blair's three terms.

7:29His background's in the trade unions. He's a very pretty effective operator within the party. Now, I don't, and this thing literally came out of the blue. He was actually at, I was at a charity dinner. Margaret McDonagh, the former general secretary of the Labour Party, who died of a brain tumour, and there's this charity that's been set up in her name. And I was at it the other night with Fiona, and John Healy was there with his wife, Jackie. I spoke to him briefly and it now turns out this was Monday it was Monday and this was the day that he was first presented with the complete defense investment plan so he was obviously sitting there didn't let on anything but he was obviously sitting there really considering his considering his future and if you'd have said to me at the start of this parliament here's here's Keir Starmer's cabinet assuming he lasts five years who do you think is going to stay in the same job for the five years, I'd have put John Healy in there.

8:19We interviewed him on Leading. He's very, very, I got a message today from somebody fairly high up in the MOD who said, you know, we ministers come and go, but we were rather hoping this one wouldn't go. He's respected. He's been good at his job. The first part of his resignation letter actually is just a sort of very long list of all the things that he and Keir Stauer have done together to boost our defenses. So I think is a very big thing.

8:45Rory Stewart:Can I just come in on that, just footnote from here. So I'm in Cumbria, and I was speaking to some people up on the train, and then I was speaking to a Cumbrian frontier, all of whom are from the right, very much from the right, kind of UKIP voting, reform voting. And their immediate response was, oh, John Healy, I thought he was the good guy. He was the one that we liked. And the reason I just wanted to say that is that it's a reminder of something that Keir Starmer could have done, but decided not to do. And it's a bit surprising that he didn't, which is to lean into Labour being the patriotic party of defence.

9:20Rory Stewart:Look, you can have an argument with the Treasury, and that's just where I'm afraid Rachel Reeves tends to get stuck, which is the Treasury will be saying, as it's always said, oh, are you sure you need all that money? Are you sure you're spending it in the right way? Your procurement's very expensive. Why are you not buying cheaper drones? Do you really need to build this new aircraft system now. Can't you wait till 2045? There are many more productive things we could do with the money if you're trying to kickstart the economy. So all that stuff. But you could imagine a different world in which a different type of leader would say, not having that conversation, I understand there's a lot of detailed points, but broadly speaking, we're in a different world.

10:01Rory Stewart:Putin, Trump, we're going to spend more on defense, and we're going to be generous, and we're going to get ahead of this. Why do you think they didn't do that? They would probably argue that they did, not least. We talked several times on the podcast about the fact that they have shredded overseas aid and development money to put it into defence. We've also talked about whether the easier thing might have been earlier in the parliament to say we're facing a new defence threat. We're going to put up tax. They didn't do that. So these are choices that you make. I think what ministers have found more frustrating is the time that this has taken.

10:35So we had the strategic defence review where George Robertson, Fiona Hill, Richard Bacon came together and wrote a pretty comprehensive defence review. It was always projected that that would be part of a two-stage process. Then would come the defence investment plan about how we get to these longer term goals. And it has been sort of just, you know, knocked about and knocked about. I couldn't help thinking when I was reading John Healy's resignation letter, Ben Wallace, another former defence secretary that we spoke to on leading. if you remember in his interview how many times did he attack the treasury i mean it was really it was relentless and i wonder if john healy just got to that point of saying you can't reason with these people just quickly on this let me sort of push it once more so um

11:19Rory Stewart:i think if you ask the question do a big review pull in very high profile people like george robertson you've got a general richard baron and they come up with a recommendation you've got to do it. You've got to do it. And then if you give the impression that you're going to bring together a defense investment plan, which is going to meet the challenges set out in that review, you've got to do it. And you've got to do it quickly. And you've got to keep your defense secretary on side. And that is good for Britain's defense, but it's also would be smart politics because losing your defense secretary, looking like you're trying to sort of cheese pair around the edges, doesn't get you anywhere.

11:58Rory Stewart:I mean, they'll end up spending a fortune on defense anyway. They're going to have to spend on nuclear. They're going to have to spend on AUKUS. But what Rachel Reeves will have achieved probably with the Treasury is a little bit of savings around the margins, which are not sufficient to transform her finances, but are just enough to irritate Healy enough that he actually walks out on them and gives everyone the impression that Labour's weak on defence. So why did they do it? Why can't Starmer see this? And just to underline that, the one part, I mean, people are going to have all their criticism of Keir Starmer and you know he's faced plenty but he has managed to develop this reputation as being pretty sound on foreign affairs and and defense so the one kind of really strong point that he has in his favor John Healy today is as considerably undercut and I mean I was speaking to a couple of ministers in the immediate wake of this and both of whom said they did not see this coming at all.

12:53They'd heard there were kind of murmurs and there were troubles. And one said, actually, they thought that John had maybe underplayed his hand in the first part of the negotiations. So the Treasury didn't really fully understand how kind of on the rampage he might end up being. I don't know. But neither of them saw this coming. But both did say that it's kind of of a piece of stuff just taking too long to resolve, of decisions not being taken at the pace that they need to. So, and if you just think, to think over the last few days, there we are on Sunday, President Zelensky flies into London. Why London?

13:31Because Keir Starmer has managed to develop this good relationship with Macron and Mertz, the E3, the European three big defence powers. And, you know, they say the right things and they talk about the support, but then literally within two or three days to have your defence secretary come out and say that since we've started arguing about this defense investment plan, things have actually got tougher, not least because of Iran. Andy refers to the high north and the potential of war in the Arctic. So I can't really answer your question. It's very, very frustrating. What it speaks to is this sense of, you know, we're now, because of the challenge to Keir Starmer's leadership, because of sort of everybody hanging around waiting for this by-election, it's almost like people think, well we can't get stuff done and so i don't know you'll be in in the conversation you've been in

14:22Rory Stewart:many many of these conversations and and i've seen a couple of them when a minister goes in to say unless you do this i resign as the prime minister you've got two choices you either concede reluctantly and very angrily because you don't like being blackmailed or you say i'm sorry i'm not doing it you can resign and starm has obviously chosen the latter option i i guess there would have been an option for him over the last three days to be like okay john you can have everything you want and just stay and he's chosen not to why do you think when push comes to shove starmer decided to dig his heels in and let healy go rather than give him what he wanted well i don't know that's the nature of the conversation the other bit the other so you've given the two options the third option is that you have what i would define as a very kind a human conversation and you win them around on a different basis.

15:17Now, until, you know, doubtless, we will hear more from John Healy and we will possibly hear more from Keir Starmer, but we probably won't get the true ins and outs. But I have been in those situations where you can, the fact that this literally came out of the blue for most of us, for most people inside the government and for most people outside the government, I think actually speaks to John Healey's credit in that I don't think he was doing what a lot of ministers do, which is to sort of, you know, do the bullying and the blackmailing and the intimidation through the media. He didn't seem to me to do any of that.

15:49So this has presumably been going on for a while. But I wonder if it speaks to a deeper frustration and that that is what has provoked it at this time. But look, in the end, I suspect that if Keir Starmer thought that he's ended up believing the Treasury, he's ended up believing that this is the only way that they can affordably do what John Healy is trying to do with regard to the defence investment plan. But it's a very, very severe blow, this. I mean, it's like, you know, West Streeting resigns, well, he's the health secretary, and he gets replaced, and he's a very effective communication, all that.

16:29But I think when we are in this position, you know, that conference that you and I were at in Finland last week, you know, how often do we talk about Russia and the threat Keir Starmer made a speech recently where he talked about, you know, we're looking at a possibility by 2030 that Russia might launch an attack upon a NATO country. So we do have to crank up. And by the way, Rory, I yesterday was at an event with Mick Mulvaney, who was Donald Trump's chief of staff for a while in his first term. And he was very interesting about this. I mean, look, our politics are sort of way apart. But he did say something which really struck home.

17:07He said, look, I get why you feel the way you do about Trump and Ukraine, but you've got to understand most of the people in America, they're thinking, hold on a minute, you Europeans, you're way richer than Russia. The European economy is a lot bigger than Russia's. Why do you keep looking to us? And it's sort of, because Trump does it in the way that he does it, it brought it home to me that we're not being serious enough about this threat and why the NATO European response has to change.

17:36Rory Stewart:Yeah, absolutely. Although I would say there is also a degree of gaslighting. There's a degree of Trump's people and the Republicans trying to dress up a very, very savage, humiliating series of retreats from NATO by suggesting it's somehow our fault. And, you know, we should. And it's very tempting, I noticed, for Europeans to fall into saying, well, we've got to be honest. We didn't spend enough of defense. Maybe Trump's got a point, et cetera. The truth of the matter is that America, just on this for a second, all it needed to do, it didn't need to spend the money on Ukraine. It didn't need to keep pouring money into NATO.

18:16Rory Stewart:All it needed to do was when asked, will you hold the Article 5 guarantees? When the Secretary of Defense asked, will you support a Baltic country with its power, I should say yes. Because ultimately what America can do for us is find nuclear weapons. I mean, that was always the nature of their deterrent going all the way back to the 80s. And so America doesn't get to get away with saying that this is just about us spending. But I agree, we're not spending it. And there's much more we can talk about there. I mean, we've in the past had this discussion about what the hell happens if we start ramping defense expenditure up by tens of billions of pounds a year.

18:54Rory Stewart:That's a lot of money. And it's also something we don't admit enough to ourselves that it's not a productive, a very productive form of investment. We like to tell ourselves various stories that maybe this is going to be great for our industrial base. What the Treasury would have been saying, and I've got some sympathy with them, is, hey, wait a sec. Look at the kit that you're talking about buying. A lot of this you're buying from the U.S. A lot of this is just British taxpayers' money being shipped over to the United States to buy exquisite American kit and employ American factory workers. And also, just let me jump there.

19:27On Russia, if you look at Russia, they did have a bit of economic sugar rush on the back of suddenly being back in a major war. But it's now one of the reasons why their economy is struggling. So I think you're right about that.

19:41Rory Stewart:There's been some very interesting modeling. I think the OECD and the World Bank and others have done it by economists. Just showing that a pound invested in defense historically simply doesn't return that much compared to a pound invested in infrastructure or education. So if what you're primarily trying to do is get economic growth, yes, you do defense by all means. If you think you're going to be attacked, it's vital for your national security. But don't kid yourself that that's an easy route to growing economy. Anyway, all that aside, I guess Healy, and again, if people haven't listened to the interview on leading, we're going to, I hope, post it again and give people a chance to listen to our conversation with Healy.

20:21Rory Stewart:I mean, he's a really unusual person. And as you say, he's not central casting for modern politics at all. We're going into an election where Wes Streeting is about to run for the leadership. He's barely been in since 2015. I mean, Keir Starmer's only been in parliament for just over 10 years. And previous prime ministers, Rishi Sunak also only came in in 2015. Even Liz Truss only came in in 2010 with me. John Healy is a very different world, a world in which somebody can be in parliament for It's 30 years of, you know, have all, you know, reach back to Tony Blair, right? Yeah. And he's somebody who, as you say, hasn't been briefing the press, hasn't been doing what traditionally, if you were Gavin Williamson or Grant Shapps or Liz Truss, leading up to a resignation, you would have been taking Tim Shipman out for lunch.

21:15Rory Stewart:And the Sunday Times or the Spectator would have been running stories for weeks. You know, he's on the verge of resignation. He's on the verge of resignation. That's one of the reasons, I guess, why your colleagues are surprised, because actually in modern politics, they expect to be able to read in the pages of Spectator on the Sunday Times who's going to resign. And they're very confused if somebody resigns who hasn't been. They do like to be ahead of the game. Did you know about one in three people with plaque psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness and swelling?

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22:43Let me just give you, Roy, somebody just sent me this, it's a statement by the trade body. ADS, for the Aerospace, Defense, Security and Space Sectors, Kevin Cragen. He says, John Healy has consistently shown himself to be an intelligent, supportive, highly principled man who has the best interests of UK defense, top of mind in everything that he does. His resignation today is something to lament and is truly a damning reflection on the current state of affairs. It should not take the resignation of an honorable man for the realization to sink in that we need this defense investment plan as soon as possible um so he is he he is respected and he but he's a very he's also a pretty canny political operator john um no it could be look if i'm thinking a bit cynically has he had a conversation with andy burnham as he had a conversation with with street I don't know.

23:39I don't think so.

23:42Rory Stewart:Presumably, though, he's odds on if either of them get sent to be back in as Defence Secretary or Foreign Secretary. It's not a foolish move, right? Well, hold on, though, Rory. Only if they come in and are able to say, we are going to be spending a lot more than Keir Starman was going to spend. and then they have they then have to have the conversations that rachel reeves and others have been having with the other ministers to say that means taking this from you and of course where the tories are zeroing in inevitably is on on welfare um the event i did with mick mulvaney the guy who was chairing it he we were just chatting beforehand and he said look i think the you know people have got used to this government and by the way it was another i did another of my show of hands yet again a majority that wanted Keir Starmer to stay, but we'll part of that for now.