20/03/2025. PM Keir Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey visit the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood. Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street
John Healey resigned as Keir Starmer’s defence secretary on June 11. Despite the now former prime minister’s promise to plunge a further £15 billion into military spending, Healey was hungry for more.
Healey did not have to wait long before returning to Cabinet. In July, he was rewarded for wielding the knife and installed in Number 11 as Andy Burnham’s Chancellor.
Healey’s job title wasn’t the only summer shift, however. Last week, he confirmed he would shelve his own target to allocate 3% of British GDP to defence.
This was no damascene conversion to anti-war arguments. After all, Healey is so loyal to the military-industrial complex that he requested an army officer to accompany him at the Treasury.
Instead, the Chancellor’s pivot indicates a recognition that to implement the austerity necessary to hike war spending once more would decisively end the so-called “Burnham bounce”.
The OBR said in March last year that increasing defence spending to 3% of GDP would cost an additional £17.3bn a year by 2029-30. Such cuts would come in addition to those already made – and left behind – by Keir Starmer.
Before leaving office, his government cut capital budgets across Whitehall and trimmed £2bn from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to pay for the Defence Investment Plan (DIP). These measures still leave a gaping £5bn black hole for John Healey to fill from other public spending.
The electorate has not granted its consent to 3%. Labour made no such commitment in their 2024 manifesto and now, amid falling living standards across the country, the Chancellor has temporarily retreated.
Given the false promises of the DIP have already begun to unravel, perhaps that’s no surprise.
The plan, reports the Transition Security Project, is set to trigger a net loss of UK jobs. It estimates that at least 10,000 posts will go in order to fund the £7bn in planned cuts across almost all government departments.
The so-called “defence dividend” is a myth. Indeed, as defence secretary, John Healey announced the construction of 13 new arms factories across the country in November 2025. Only 1000 jobs were to be created across the sites.
What’s more, as senior Labour figures know, the Ministry of Defence is a sinkhole for public money. Under Starmer’s leadership in 2022, the party accused the MoD of wasting £13bn of taxpayers’ cash since 2010.
Even former defence minister Al Carns, who followed Healey out of the door in June, reported “unbelievable” inefficiency at the department following his exit.
This is the core of Healey’s problem: Try as he might to appease the weapons companies, throwing money at the war machine will ultimately only cost the British working-class, whose votes Andy Burnham may require sooner rather than later.
The question of meeting Nato’s military spending targets has only been deferred for the moment. Rearmament remains a central component of the new Prime Minister’s agenda. It was no coincidence that Wes Streeting delivered his first keynote address as Burnham’s new Defence Secretary at one of Britain’s biggest arms fairs.
“Defence is up and flying again,” boasted Healey’s successor as he confirmed that Britain had agreed £11.8bn worth of weapons contracts in the 10 days following the DIP’s publication.
Streeting’s words took on a different meaning entirely when Burnham approved the use of British military bases for the US to conduct its illegal war on Iran.
The new government’s relationship with the defence sector might not have featured in its TikTok blitz, but war preparation has been a central part of the PM’s plans to “reindustrialise” Britain.
In July, Downing Street pledged to “supercharge” UK munitions production with a spree of small grants for arms companies across the country.
Weeks later, Burnham joined the Mayor of London to promote an unpaid Sainsbury’s work experience scheme for young people.
The supermarket, which laid off 3000 workers in 2025 despite posting more than £1bn in profits, aims to exploit the free labour of 10,000 people across the country under the guise of tackling the youth unemployment crisis. Having pledged to end 40 years of neoliberalism, the Prime Minister heralded a “really positive development”.
In Burnham’s Britain, the choice facing young people is simple: work free for the supermarket monopoly or take up a place in the ever-expanding weapons sector.
Neither option offers a future to a generation already over-burdened with debt and soaring bills. This is an increasingly stark reality.
The Trussell Trust reports that three in 10 young people have had to cut back on food to afford other essentials in the past three months and one in six have skipped meals to afford travel to work.
It won’t be long before the clamour for increased defence spending begins once more.
When it does, the anti-war movement must meet the military-industrial complex head on, contrasting Burnham’s rhetoric with his government’s quiet assault on working-class living standards in the name of the defence sector.
Source: The National Scotland