On Thursday, June 19, both UK Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns resigned, citing the government’s failure to commit sufficient funding to defence. Healey stated publicly that the plans on offer “fall well short” of what Britain’s armed forces require, with his resignation letter published in full. The resignations come as UK forces face operational cuts without more funding, according to a warning from the defence chief, and as the Ministry of Defence’s “critical” expansion blueprint for Heathrow — an institution that now manages infrastructure alongside military procurement — reportedly awaits cabinet sign-off. The resignations land on a government already under intense political pressure, with Prime Minister Starmer battling a Labour leadership crisis and by-election turbulence.
The received wisdom
The sympathetic reading of Starmer’s position is that he inherited an impossible fiscal situation from the Conservatives — a deteriorating public balance sheet, a health service in crisis, and public services crying out for investment after years of austerity. In this framing, Healey and Carns are honourable but ultimately naive: they expected the government to commit to defence spending targets that, however desirable in isolation, would require either cutting other vital public services or breaking Labour’s fiscal rules. The argument continues that in a country where the public has been insulated from genuine discussion about defence trade-offs since the Cold War ended, demanding a defence spending commitment equivalent to 3% of GDP — the figure circulating in NATO corridors — is a political ask that requires careful phasing and public persuasion, not a resignation-triggering deadline. Starmer’s team would argue, not unreasonably, that a government falling apart over internal rows is not in any better position to defend the country than one that is taking a measured approach.
A different read
But the resignation of a defence secretary — not a junior minister, not a backbencher, but the cabinet official responsible for the armed forces — is a serious institutional event that the Starmer spin machine cannot wave away with a “governing is complicated” shrug.
The underlying problem is not primarily political: it is strategic. Britain is confirming it will play a full part in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously cutting the operational capacity of the forces that would be asked to do the reopening. This is the defence version of writing cheques your bank won’t honour. It is a pattern with deep roots in British strategic behaviour since at least the 1960s, when successive governments discovered that the east of Suez pretension could not be sustained by an economy that had not managed a serious productivity breakthrough since the Marshall Plan. The difference is that in 2026, the security environment is considerably more dangerous than it was in the relatively benign 1960s: Russia is actively conducting arson attacks targeting the British Prime Minister on British soil, conducting warning-shot encounters in the English Channel, and demonstrating across Ukraine that it regards Western red lines as provisional. Against that backdrop, “wait and see” defence planning is not prudence — it is denial.
The deeper irony here is that it is a Labour government doing this. The centre-left, in its modern incarnation, has generally resolved the tension between social spending and defence by deciding that defence is fundamentally a Conservative preoccupation — that wanting a stronger military is coded as hawkish, imperialist, or simply Tory. This is historically illiterate. Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government, which founded the NHS, also committed Britain to nuclear deterrence and kept conscription. Ernest Bevin, Attlee’s Foreign Secretary, was the hawk who understood that the Soviet threat was existential and that American engagement in Europe had to be secured at all costs. The Labour tradition contains serious strategic thinkers; Starmer’s government, for all its moderation, appears to have misplaced them.
Pete Hegseth’s simultaneous announcement that the US will review its military presence in Europe — threatening a reduction in American commitments to NATO allies who do not spend adequately — is the context in which the British resignations land. If Washington follows through, the free-riding arrangements that have allowed European governments to fund welfare states on American security guarantees begin to collapse. Britain, which at least has a functioning military tradition and nuclear deterrent, is better placed than most European nations to adjust. But “better placed than most” and “actually prepared” are not the same thing. Healey and Carns saw this clearly; the Prime Minister, it appears, has not.
What to watch
Watch whether the new Defence Secretary — whoever Starmer appoints — arrives with a genuine mandate to fight for spending, or whether the role becomes a casualty-absorbing revolving door. Second, track whether Labour’s Makerfield by-election performance, where Andy Burnham is standing and where the defence rows are looming over the campaign, changes the internal arithmetic on Starmer’s survival. Third, listen for any formal announcement from Hegseth on the European review — if it takes concrete shape before the UK has resolved its own defence funding question, London will face allied pressure at the worst possible political moment. Fourth, the Bank of England holding rates while warning of high energy prices is relevant: fiscal space for defence depends partly on whether the economy grows fast enough to widen the budget envelope without difficult choices.
— J