The defence minister’s resignation reveals the complete collapse of Keir Starmer’s authority, says Eliot Wilson

The resignation of the Defence Secretary, John Healey, last week, with his Armed Forces Minister Al Carns a few hours behind him, was a very serious blow for Sir Keir Starmer. Let us be clear about the significance of this: since the post was created in 1964, only one other Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine over the Westland affair in 1986, has resigned on a point of principle. However much drama the future ownership of Westland Helicopters generated at the time, Healey has walked out over a central part of the government’s policy stance, the issue of public expenditure on defence.

Healey is a loyal, unshowy, safe pair of hands who has spent 21 of the past 25 years on Labour’s front bench. That made his quiet but cutting resignation letter all the more damning. (Heseltine, by contrast, who went the extra mile and resigned halfway through a Cabinet meeting, was known to be prone to histrionics.) Having seen the financial settlement for the much-delayed Defence Investment Plan on Monday, and knowing that the Ministry of Defence had initially estimated a shortfall of £28bn over the next four years, he found it unacceptable.

The accepted wisdom is that HM Treasury would not agree to more than £13.5bn, less than half what the MoD had estimated. It is in the nature of the Treasury to start the bidding at nothing then slowly and reluctantly concede tuppence ha’penny, but Healey knew perfectly well that such a settlement was inadequate given the defence and security ambitions – and commitments – of the current government.

“I would not be able to accept a DIP settlement that does not give our Forces the resources they need, [and] I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation as your Defence Secretary.”

That is a severe enough criticism. When a minister as level-headed and undemonstrative as Healey talks about “decisions that would reduce the readiness of our Forces and increase the risk to personnel on operations”, it has a fearful impact. But there was something more in his resignation letter. He accepted that the Treasury had refused to find the funding he believed necessary, but he implicated the Prime Minister in a very damaging way.

“You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.”

Deadly

That word, “unable”, is deadly. Reduced to their essentials, Healey’s words confirm what has been suspected for more than six months, that 10 Downing Street and the Treasury have been locked in fierce combat over the level of spending in the DIP, the Prime Minister favouring a higher amount than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is obvious now that Sir Keir Starmer lost that battle.

If we take the rule of thumb set out by former Scottish Conservative leader Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links – that “embattled is one away from beleaguered, and once you’re beleaguered, you’re f*ucked” – the Prime Minister was already heavily embattled: Thursday sees the Makerfield by-election which is likely to return his would-be assassin Andy Burnham to the House of Commons, backbenchers are more than restive and the fallout from the appointment of Lord Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington continues to fester.

Embattled is one away from beleaguered, and once you’re beleaguered, you’re f*cked

Starmer may now be in beleaguered territory. Healey’s resignation shows that the Prime Minister, who is, remember, formally First Lord of the Treasury, cannot even impose his will on as busted a flush as the Chancellor (and Second Lord of the Treasury), Rachel Reeves. Meanwhile, it was reported a week ago that, with departments instructed to make capital budget savings of at least one per cent, Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, was pushing back hard. Consistently the most popular Cabinet minister among Labour members, Miliband clearly feels he has the heft to challenge Downing Street over his cherished sustainability agenda.

The British government is not an elective autocracy. In theory it is the Cabinet, a committee of the Privy Council, which is the senior decision-making body and advises the King on major questions of policy. But the Prime Minister, as the King’s chief adviser, chairman of the Cabinet and minister for the civil service, with the delegated power of appointment and dismissal over all other ministers, enjoys a powerful position. In the last resort, he should prevail over any individual Cabinet minister. If Reeves’s position was utterly inflexible, it is open to Starmer to thank her for her service and find a more amenable Chancellor.

Clearly he can’t. The Prime Minister’s writ now seems to run weakly through Whitehall, leaving the government more as a federation of separate fiefdoms than a unified executive.

Political barbs are at their most powerful when they encapsulate a fundamental truth, an idea that resonates with what people already think or half-suspect. When Norman Lamont was dismissed as Chancellor in 1993, he skewered John Major’s administration:

“There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions… there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power.”

Sir Keir Starmer is beginning to resemble the John Major of the 1990s: hesitant, frustrated, surrounded by opponents, with the mien of someone for whom it is always winter but never Christmas. Most damningly of all, he gives the appearance of having lost control of his own destiny, no longer able to determine the direction of his premiership. The Prime Minister is in office but not in power – and he may not be in power for much longer.