John Healey’s resignation is a seismic moment in the collapse of Keir Starmer’s government. HM Treasury’s “victory” of reducing financial commitment to upgrading the nation’s defence is at the expense of the Prime Minister’s continuing “leadership”, such as it was.

Healey’s resignation is terminal for Starmer and must be the most serious ministerial resignation since Sir Geoffrey Howe’s resignation from Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet in 1990. That departure included the best resignation line ever delivered in the House:

“It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.” Sir Geoffrey Howe MP, House of Commons, 13th November 1990

Funnily enough, John Healey could literally quote these exact words as they neatly sum up his own situation with Sir Keir too.

In the shortest of short terms, the question must be how Starmer can convince anyone to take on the Defence portfolio with the prospect of having to defend what Healey’s resignation letter makes truly indefensible. It’s evens on Hapless Jones or Honey Badger Jarvis. Jones indicated to the Prince of Darkness in his not-quite-disappearing WhatsApp messages that he had ambitions for the MoD post and is already “all in” with Starmer’s leadership. Honey Badger was Adjutant to General Sir Mike Jackson and a former Para, so knows a thing or two about taking orders in difficult circumstances and may reason “may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”

“2.68% by 2030” is a spending metric for the ages. The extraordinary thing is that Sir Keir can not see that it is a ludicrous suggestion.

In contrast, the Prime Minister’s reply to his fomer Defence Secretary is devoid of any numbers, but merely asserts that the proposed Defence Investment Plan will deliver “…an unprecedented increase in defence spending in a sustainable way” when Healey’s point of departure is his (informed) belief that the Plan, as now proposed, simply stands no chance of delivering that.

The Prime Minister has reached that dangerously delusional moment when he believes that merely repeating the hope has the same value and effect as delivering the promise. Sadly not.

The commitment to increase “Defence” spending for 2026/7 includes the simple accounting trick of including Intelligence spending included in the previously separate Single Intelligence Account expenditure for SIS, GHCQ and the Security Service which totalled £4.5bn in
2025/6 and forecast to increase to £5.4bn in 2028/9. That’s certainly one way of “increasing spending.”

As Andy Burnham moves closer to victory in Makerfield next Thursday, the Prime Minister seems to be becoming ever more detached from political reality. Burnham will win, probably by more than early Survation/MiC polling suggested as Kenyon has stumbled and Reform have failed to articulate why it would be a better or quicker route to removing Starmer from office. This die is cast…

Check us out on insta @theworldofukpolitics