Al Carns resigns an hour after vowing to steady the ship
Al Carns resigned as armed forces minister about an hour after telling television viewers that his job was to "steady the ship". The move added fresh pressure on Sir Keir Starmer after John Healey quit as Defence Secretary on Thursday and left the government searching for a replacement.
John Healey’s defence rebuke
Healey resigned on Thursday and wrote to Starmer that the level of military spending proposed by the prime minister "falls well short" of what is needed to protect the country. That complaint turned the planned defence package into a live test of whether Downing Street could persuade the armed forces, defence ministers and the rest of the government that it had a workable plan.
The Defence Investment Plan had been intended to show direction and delivery from Starmer. Instead, it became a source of criticism from departing ministerial critics who said it showed an inability to get things done, and it did so while Labour was already dealing with a spray of resignations, fury and anger a month earlier after calamitous election results.
Al Carns on Thursday night
Carns gave two television interviews on Thursday night while still a minister. In them, he said "my job is to steady the ship". He also told the while still a serving minister that "if someone fires a starting gun, I'm not scared of gunfire".
About an hour later, Carns resigned. The speed of that change left Starmer and Dan Jarvis looking for a new armed forces minister while the government tried to hold its defence message together in public.
Dan Jarvis and Nato
Jarvis is due at a Nato defence ministers meeting next week, giving the government a near-term diplomatic appointment before it has settled the personnel question around the armed forces brief. That leaves the defence team needing to present continuity at the same moment the cabinet has lost one minister over spending and another over the response to it.
The resignation also narrows the space for Starmer to sell the Defence Investment Plan as direction and delivery. A minister can defend a policy only so long as the person explaining it is still in place, and Carns’s exit means the government now has to do that with one fewer voice.
For the government, the practical effect is immediate: a new armed forces minister has to be found, and the defence argument has to be reset before Jarvis goes to Nato next week.
