The UK Defense Minister, John Healey, resigned on Thursday, 11 June, over a lengthy dispute regarding military spending commitments. He has also accused Labor Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer of failing to follow through on previous government spending commitments necessary to keep the nation secure in an international environment of rising threats from several hostile actors.
Healey’s departure also comes in the wake of a power grab by the UK Treasury to take control of spending on the multinational Global Combat Air Program (GCAP).
The project is for the design and production of a 6th-generation jet fighter, developed in cooperation with Italy and Japan.
GCAP 6th Generation Fighter.
Healey’s resignation was tendered alongside a blistering critique of the PM and is expected to mark the beginning of the collapse of the current Labor government. It is one of the most precipitous declines of a national leader in recent UK history.
Starmer, who came into office in what was seen as a landslide electoral victory over the Conservative Party, has seen his authority declining. This resignation now shines a light on one of the major conflicts within this government.
But given projections for both spending levels and anticipated revenues, it is becoming increasingly clear that previous plans to increase UK defense spending are not feasible amid runaway welfare spending.
The Next Shoe Drops
On Friday, the PM found himself facing increasing criticism and calls for his resignation after Armed Forces Minister Al Carns followed Healey’s lead by resigning as well. Carns told the BBC the agreed-to Defense Investment Plan (DIP), which is the official euphemism now used in place of the words “defense budget”, was not “transformative enough” and was regressive in nature rather than a plan for adequate future defense outlays.
Carns stated that the government has “got to find more money” and that securing the additional funding required comes down to decisions the PM must make. The day before, the then-Defense Secretary John Healey had told Starmer that the upcoming DIP “falls well short of what is required for defense” and that the current spending plans were “not built for the threat we face.”
Healey had been seen as one of the more competent, as well as loyal, members of Starmer’s cabinet. But as of late, he had been engaged in a confrontation with the PM and Finance Minister Rachel Reeves over what steps could be taken to secure the additional military spending needed.
This conflict has caused months of delays in finalizing the DIP, which was scheduled for completion and issuance last year. “You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country,” Healey wrote in his letter of resignation to Starmer.
Budgeting and Priorities
The BBC has today published an assessment of the UK’s defense spending in relation to other major budgetary line items. The largest spending category is what the UK Treasury calls “social protection”, which includes the state pension fund and working-age benefits. More than £150bn of the £400bn in that budgetary outlay is projected to be spent on the state pension alone.
If health spending is added to the social protection budget, this already amounts to almost half of total UK government spending. After this, there is an education budget of £145bn, followed by interest payments on government debt of £135bn.
All these much higher-priced activities are more than the defense budget, which is only £90bn, and amounts to about 6 percent of government spending. The UK also has a reputation to uphold, as historically it has been a major world military power.
But Whitehall was put into an embarrassing situation when, in March, the Royal Navy could not even deploy an advanced warship to Cyprus after the air base there was hit by an Iranian-made drone.
The UK has also had to pick up some of the slack resulting from the US downsizing its commitments to protecting Europe. Britain is now the third-largest spender in NATO, as Germany increased its spending in 2024 to exceed the UK’s. The DIP was intended to elevate the UK armed forces to a state of “warfighting readiness,” but Healey and others had been complaining that the current budget plans fall well short of that mark.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, with a specialization in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
