UK defense secretary and armed forces minister resign over spending

UK Armed Forces Minister Al Carns resigned on Thursday just hours after Defense Secretary John Healey stepped down, dealing a double blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government over its defense spending plans amid growing concerns about military readiness. Carns said he could no longer remain in government after concluding that the changes he had advocated for in defense policy and military investment were unlikely to be implemented.

“It has become clear to me that the change I had pushed for is not going to come,” Carns said in his resignation letter. He argued that the government’s planned defense investment strategy was not suited to the threats facing the country, warning that the armed forces were being asked to operate in a more dangerous world without sufficient resources.

‘Not built for the threat’

“The character of conflict is changing faster than our procurement can keep up with,” Carns said, adding that current spending plans were neither transformative enough nor adequately funded. His departure followed Healey’s own resignation, in which the former defense secretary said a long-awaited defense investment plan had failed to provide the resources required by the armed forces and criticized the Treasury for refusing additional funding.

New defense secretary named

Starmer rejected the criticism, saying the government’s defense investment plan would provide the military with the resources needed to maintain national security while ensuring fiscal sustainability. The prime minister moved quickly to fill the vacancy, appointing Dan Jarvis as the new defense secretary, Downing Street announced shortly after the resignations.

Jarvis has served as the Member of Parliament for Barnsley North since 2011 and was mayor of South Yorkshire between 2018 and 2022. Before entering politics, he served as an officer in the Parachute Regiment from 1997 to 2011 with operational deployments in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and had been serving as security minister at the Home Office since Labour’s return to government in 2024.