John Healey: The ‘loyal Labour man’ with a 30-year parliamentary history
John Healey has resigned as Sir Keir Starmer’s defense minister amid concerns over the government’s defense spending.
He said the current allocation was “far below what is needed” to protect Britain’s security.
Mr Healey, a senior Labor frontbencher, had served as defense chief since Sir Keir took over the party leadership in 2020; he was initially in the shadow cabinet and later retained his position following Labour’s decisive general election victory in 2024.
An ally described him as “one of Labour’s staunchest men for over 30 years”.
His extensive parliamentary career, spanning three decades, saw him hold a variety of ministerial roles in Whitehall departments including housing, local government and the Treasury. He also assisted Gordon Brown as parliamentary private secretary.
The soft-spoken Yorkshireman also backed the invasion of Iraq and has been a vocal critic of the previous Conservative government’s plans to reduce the size of the army to 72,500 by 2025.
After Labor entered government in July 2024, Mr Healey said the situation for the armed forces was “much worse than we thought” and that they were not “ready to fight” war.
In the face of a fraught geopolitical situation, Mr Healey’s Ministry of Defense faces financial difficulties as the country’s top military chief warned of a £28bn budget deficit in January.
And Sir Keir’s failure to adequately address the problem led to his unexpected departure from government.
In his resignation letter, Mr Healey said he had no choice but to resign because he could not accept the long-awaited deal on the Defense Investment Plan, which “will reduce the readiness of our forces and increase the risk to personnel on operations and could make the country less secure”.
Detailing his record in the post, he wrote that in less than two years in office, “we’ve stepped up to lead internationally for Ukraine with the Coalition of the Willing and Ukraine Defense Contact Group, established Britain as a leading voice for Europe in Nato, raised defense investment to 2.5% of GDP three years earlier than anyone expected, launched the deepest defense reforms in 50 years, won the biggest UK defense export deals for decades, published a first-of-its-kind Strategic Defense Review, gave our Armed Forces the biggest pay rise in nearly 20 years, boosted military morale, fixed over 1,200 of the worst forces family homes, reset relations with European allies and signed major defense agreements with Germany, Norway and France”.
But he said he was leaving “with great regret and reluctance” because the prime minister was “unable, and the Treasury was unwilling, to allocate the resources the nation needed to defend the country at this time of increasing threats”.
Mr Healey has represented the South Yorkshire constituency since 1997 when he first entered Parliament.
The seat, a former mining area north of Sheffield, became Rawmarsh and Conisbrough following boundary changes at the last general election.
Born in Wakefield in 1960, Mr Healey was educated at Lady Lumley’s Comprehensive School, Pickering and Peter’s School in York before studying social and political sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
Before becoming an MP, she campaigned for disability rights in the voluntary sector for a number of organisations, including the mental health charity Mind.
After working as a public relations specialist for several years, she joined the union world; He worked in the communications department of the Production, Science and Finance union and then as campaign director at the TUC.
Mr. Healey is married and has a son.
