Prime Minister Andy Burnham appoints John Healey as Chancellor. Picture by Simon Dawson
New Defence Secretary Wes Streeting hurried down to the Farnborough Air show, where arms manufacturers sell their wares, to make his first keynote speech.
Streeting promised new arms contracts worth over £11 billion and pledged unstinting support for rearmament in a speech that never deviated from Ministry of Defence approved themes. He told the assembled arms corporation bigwigs: “President Trump has called on Europe to carry a greater share of the burden for our own defence, and he is right to do so … I’m pleased to say that in the 10 days after the publication of the Defence Investment Programme, we agreed more than £11.8 billion worth of contracts. Defence is up and flying again.”
Also today his boss, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, committed to allowing the US to use RAF bases in the UK to bomb Iran.
Voters can look forward to more of the same, especially from the new Chancellor John Healey. Healey was the key figure in getting rid of Kier Starmer as prime minister. It was Healey who resigned because Starmer and then Chancellor Rachel Reeves refused to hike arms spending quite as high as Healey and the military were demanding.
Now Healey has taken over the Chancellor’s job from Reeves, while the other figure mainly responsible for plotting against Starmer, Wes Streeting, is Defence Secretary.
Whether Burnham is rewarding the orchestrators of the coup against Starmer or not, it is certainly the case that the military industrial complex has a firm grip on the heart of government.
Healey is an arms spending extremist and he will ensure that the military and the arms industry get everything they want from the government. Healey is also a supporter of the meatgrinder war in Ukraine, and an advocate of rearmament throughout Europe.
With both Healey and Streeting pushing rearmament, Burnham will be in no position to resist the pressure for a guns-not-butter economic policy, even if he were minded to do so. And there is no evidence that he is.
Neither will new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband. His previous career high was to oppose the bombing of Syria when he was Labour leader. But with Streeting and Healey flanking him he is already making NATO loyalist statements and would be sacrificed if he were ever to revisit his previous opposition to US led policy.
Streeting reiterated the promise to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on weapons by the next decade. Meanwhile the government struggles to explain where it will find the money to meet its ultra-modest promise to keep bus fares to £2.