542. Starmer Loses His Defence Secretary: What Next?

What does John Healey's shock resignation mean for Keir Starmer, whose position is already on the line ahead of Andy Burnham's crunch by-election in Makerfield? Who might replace Healey in one of the most important jobs in government, at one of the most dangerous moments in the UK's history? With NATO allies demanding higher spending on defence and Trump's America growing ever more unpredictable, can Britain afford a government at war with itself over military spending? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this emergency episode. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Odd Arne Westad by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Adam Thornton, Harry Swan Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:50Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to a live episode of The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And why are we doing a live episode today, just ahead of the kickoff of the World Cup? Because, out of the blue, breaking news, Defence Secretary John Healy resigned from the cabinet. Worse for Keir Starmer, he did so at a time when the Prime Minister is facing a possible leadership challenge in the coming weeks or months, with the likeliest challenger, Andy Burnham, exactly one week away now from the by-election that may see his return to Parliament. And perhaps most devastating of all, John Healy makes clear in his resignation letter that leadership is the issue. This, this line, which I suspect hit Keir Starmer

• 3:35Alastair Campbell?

  quite hard. "You have been unable," writes John Healy, "and the Treasury has been unwilling to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country." So he's got Rachel Reeves as well as Keir Starmer in his sights, and he's going down fighting, I guess. The issue is defence spending, more particularly what's known as the Defence Investment Plan, which he thought had been broadly agreed some time ago, which has been sitting on the Prime Minister's desk amid some very, very tough negotiations. So we've got a few immediate questions. Who replaces him? When does the Defence Investment Plan get published? And Lindsay Hoyle, the Parliamentary Speaker, exploded today at the idea it might be tomorrow when most MPs are away.

• 4:16Alastair Campbell?

  And I guess it also begs the question, where does this leave Keir Starmer on the authority front? So Rory, where would you like to start with what is quite big news?

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  Let's, I mean, I really want to get into the, the politics of this with you and, and it's something that you'll know much more about than me. And, you know, I, one of the things we were talking about just before we came up on air is might John Healy be thinking about himself as a future Prime Minister? Could he be positioning himself for the leadership? I think the question of who the next Defence Secretary is, is slightly less interesting because it strikes me there'll be a bit of a name dark anyway, particularly if Andy Burnham's going into the running, you know, imminently. But what I want to do was just remind people a little bit about what the big conversation's about. So the big conversation is famously about the fact that following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, people have become more and more conscious, the fact that the world is getting

• 5:10Rory Stewart?

  a much more unstable place and that the United States has made it very clear that they're certainly not going to financially continue to bail out their European allies, but they may actually not even come to NATO's assistance.

• 5:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 5:25Rory Stewart?

  So there's huge pressure on all countries, of which Britain is probably the leading example in Europe, maybe along with France, Britain's leading military, Europe's leading military power, to step up. And the honest truth of the matter is, they've talked about a 2.5% expenditure and then there's a target of 3%, and then there's a 3.5%, and then there's a 5%. And I, I'm, you know, I remember all this because I was Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, so we spent a lot of time going for this and I was very proud that we led a campaign to get to 2%. But what nobody was quite clear enough about at the time when we were getting up to 2%,

• 6:05Rory Stewart?

  which is what Trump was pushing for in 2016, is 2% is nowhere near enough for Britain to begin to do the range of things it wants to do. And, and just very quickly again for the audience, there are basically three types of British military that you could have. You could have the sort of nuclear Britain, which is broadly speaking what we're actually doing. We're going to be spending probably eighteen percent or even perhaps a quarter of our entire defence expenditure just on our nuclear weapons. The new generation of submarines, the new generation of nuclear weapons. And that's essentially a bet that says our biggest single guarantee against Russia invading us is that we have these nuclear weapons that we can fire. So that would be a military that spent an enormous

• 6:48Rory Stewart?

  amount of nuclear weapons and then had some special forces inside it. Second type of army you could get, well, a sort of Ukraine European land army. And that would involve Britain maybe having some tanks, but would certainly involve it having massive stockpiles of missiles. We've got some exquisite missiles, but we've got very few of them. Some of them we've given to Ukraine, many of them we haven't bought. We don't have good surface-to-air protection. So if you wanted to get yourself in a position for a Ukraine-style war, you would have to buy an enormous number of things, from tanks to missiles, which we basically weren't planning for since nineteen eighty-nine, because we assumed there wasn't going to be another European war. And then the third thing is to keep doing what we were talking

• 7:30Rory Stewart?

  about through the nineties, two thousands, twenty teens, which is global Britain. And that's aircraft carriers, that's heading off to the Pacific, that's playing around with orcas, that's deployable expeditionary forces. We almost certainly can't afford even one of those. We definitely can't afford all three. And it's in the middle of this that John Healy has found himself back at it.

• 7:52Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it is pretty grim. When you look at the numbers of size of armed forces, equipment and kit that's available to us, this is why the defence spending issue is so fraught, because the truth is, everybody accepts that we need to spend more defence, but other ministers have fought very hard to protect their own budgets. And John Healy's clearly decided, this is not enough. I can't carry on being the person speaking up for strong defence if I don't believe that we're actually providing it. Because that's why that line was so devastating, because there's no more, there's really very few things I can think you can say of a prime minister than you're not keeping the country safe, which is, of course, what Kemmy Bain, not the Tory leader, has leapt upon. I think the, you talk about the politics of this. I mean, I wouldn't rule out John Healy.

• 8:36Alastair Campbell?

  As thinking that he might be a leadership contender. I mean, John Healy is a very interesting guy. He's been around for a long time. And he's been a minister or shadow minister pretty much all of his career. He came in in nineteen ninety seven when we won the first of Tony Blair's three terms. His background's in the trade unions. He's a very pretty effective operator within the party. Now, I don't, and this thing literally came out of the blue. He was actually, I was at a charity dinner. Margaret McDonagh, the former general secretary of the Labour Party, who died of a brain tumour. And there's this charity that's been set up in her name. And I was at it the other night with Fiona and John Healy was there with his wife Jackie. I spoke to him briefly and it now turns out this was Monday, it was Monday.

• 9:21Alastair Campbell?

  And this was the day that he was first presented with the Complete Defence Investment Plan. So he was obviously sitting there, didn't let on anything, but he was obviously sitting there really considering his, considering his future. And if you'd have said to me at the start of this parliament, here's Keir Starmer's cabinet, assuming he lasts five years. Who do you think is going to stay in the same job for the five years? I'd have put John Healy in there. We interviewed him on leading. He's very, very, I got a message today from somebody fairly high up in the MOD. Who said, you know, we ministers come and go, but we were rather hoping this one wouldn't go. He's respected. He's been good at his job. The first part of his resignation letter actually is just a sort of very log list of all the things that he and Keir Starmer

• 10:04Alastair Campbell?

  have done together to boost our defences. So I think it's a very big thing.

• 10:08Rory Stewart?

  Can I just come in on that, just footnote from here. So I'm in Cumbria. And I was speaking to some people up on the train and then I was speaking to a Cumbrian front here. All of whom are from the right, very much from the right, kind of UKIP voting, Reform voting. And their immediate response was, oh, John Healy, I thought he was the, he was the good guy. He was the one that we liked. And, and the reason I just wanted to say that is that it's a reminder of something that Keir Starmer could have done, but decided not to do. And it's a bit surprising that he didn't. Which is to lean into Labour being the patriotic party of defence. Look, you you can have an argument with the Treasury and that's just where I'm afraid Rachel Reeves tends to get stuck, which is.

• 10:49Rory Stewart?

  The Treasury will be saying, as it's always said, oh, are you sure you need all that money? Are you sure you're spending it in the right way? Your procurement's very expensive. Why are you not buying cheaper drones? Do you really need to build this new aircraft system now? Can't you wait till twenty forty five? There are many more productive things we could do with the money if you're trying to kickstart the economy. So all that stuff, but you could imagine a different world in which a different type of leader would say. Not having that conversation, I understand it's a lot of detailed points, but broadly speaking, we're in a different world. Putin, Trump, we're going to spend more on defence and we're going to be generous and we're going to get ahead of this. Why do you think they didn't do that?

• 11:32Alastair Campbell?

  They would probably argue that they did, not least, we talked several times on the podcast about the fact that they, you know, have shredded overseas. Aid and development money to put it into defence. We've also talked about whether the easiest thing might have been earlier in the parliament to say we're facing a new defence threat. We're going to put up tax, they didn't do that. So these are choices that you make. I think what ministers have found more frustrating is the time that this has taken. So we had the strategic defence review where George Robertson, Fiona Hill, Richard Begon came together and wrote a pretty comprehensive defence review. It was always projected that that would be part of a two-stage process. Then would come the Defence Investment Plan about how we get to these longer term goals.

• 12:16Alastair Campbell?

  And it has been sort of just, you know, knocked about and knocked about. I couldn't help thinking when I was reading John Healy's resignation letter, Ben Wallace, another former Defence Secretary that we spoke to on leading. If you remember in his interview, how many times did he attack the Treasury? I mean, it was it was relentless. And I wonder if John Healy just got to that point of saying. You can't reason with these people.

• 12:38Rory Stewart?

  Just quickly on this, let me sort of push it once more. So. I think if you ask the question, do a big review, pull in very high profile people like George Robertson.

• 12:50Alastair Campbell?

  You've got to do it.

• 12:51Rory Stewart?

  Richard Barron, and they come up with a recommendation.

• 12:54Alastair Campbell?

  You've got to do it.

• 12:54Rory Stewart?

  You've got to do it. And then if you give the impression that you're going to bring together a defence investment plan, which is going to meet the challenges set out in that review, you've got to do it.

• 13:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Rory Stewart?

  And you've got to do it quickly, and you've got to keep your defence secretary on side. And that is good for Britain's defence, but it's also would be smart politics because losing your defence secretary, looking like you're trying to sort of cheese pair around the edges. Doesn't get you anywhere. I mean, they'll end up spending a fortune on defence anyway. They're going to have to spend on nuclear, they're going to have to spend on AUKUS. But what Rachel Reeves will have achieved, probably with the Treasury, is a little bit of savings around the margins, which are not sufficient to transform her finances. But are just enough to irritate Healy enough that he actually walks out on them and gives everyone the impression that Labour's weak on defence. So why did they do it? Why can't Starmer see this?

• 13:46Alastair Campbell?

  The words, and just to just to underline that, the one part, I mean, people can have all their criticisms of Keir Starmer, and you know, he's faced plenty. But he has managed to develop this reputation as being pretty sound on foreign affairs and and defence. So the one kind of really strong point that he has in his favour, John Healy today is is considerably undercut. And I mean, I was speaking to a couple of ministers in the immediate wake of this, and who both of whom. Said they did not see this coming at all. They'd heard there were real, there were there were kind of murmurs and there were troubles and. One said, actually, they thought that John had maybe underplayed his hand in the first part of the negotiations. So the Treasury didn't really. Fully understand how kind of on the rampage he might end up being. I don't know.

• 14:32Alastair Campbell?

  But neither of them saw this saw this coming. But both did say that it's kind of of a piece of. Stuff just taking too long to resolve of decisions not being taken at the pace that they need to. So, and if you just think, to think over the last few days, there we are on Sunday, President Zelensky flies into London. Why London? Because Keir Starmer's managed to develop this good relationship with Macron and May, it's the E3, the European three big defence powers. And, you know, they say the right things and they talk about the support, but then literally within two or three days to have your Defence Secretary come out and say that since we've started arguing about this defence investment plan,

• 15:17Alastair Campbell?

  things have actually got tougher, not least because of Iran. And he refers to the High North and the potential of war in the Arctic. So I can't really answer your question. It's very, very frustrating. What it speaks to is this sense of, you know, we're now, because of the challenge to Keir Starmer's leadership, because of sort of everybody hanging around waiting for this by-election, it's almost like people say, well, we can't get stuff done. So I don't know.

• 15:43Rory Stewart?

  Because you would be in the conversation, you've been in many, many of these conversations, and I've seen a couple of them. When a minister goes in to say, unless you do this, I resign, as the Prime Minister, you've got two choices. You either concede reluctantly and very angrily because you don't like being blackmailled, or you say, I'm sorry, I'm not doing it. You can resign. And Starmer's obviously chosen the latter option. I guess there would have been an option for him over the last three days to be like, okay, John, you can have everything you want and just stay. And he's chosen not to. Why do you think when push comes to shove, Starmer decided to dig his heels in and let Healy go rather than give him what he wanted?

• 16:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know. That's the nature of the conversation. The other bit, the other, so you've given the two options. The third option is that you have what I would define as a very kind of human conversation. And you win them around on a different basis. Now, until, you know, doubtless, we will hear more from John Healy and we will possibly hear more from Keir Starmer, but we probably won't get the true ins and outs. But I have been in those situations where you can, the fact that this literally came out of the blue for most of us, for most people inside the government and for most people outside the government.

• 17:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think actually speaks to John Healy's credit in that I don't think he was doing what a lot of ministers do, which is to sort of, you know, do the bullying and the blackmailing and the intimidation through the media. He didn't seem to me to do any of that. So this has presumably been going on for a while. But I wonder if it speaks to a deeper frustration and that that is what has provoked it at this time. But I, look, in the end, I suspect that he, if Keir Starmer thought that he's ended up believing the Treasury, he's ended up believing that this is the only way that they can affordably do what John Healy is trying to do with regard to the Defence Investment Plan.

• 17:41Alastair Campbell?

  Um, but it's a, it's a very, very severe blow this. I mean, it's like, you know, West Streeting resigns. Well, he's the Health Secretary and he gets replaced and he's a very effective communicator and all that. But I think when we are in this position, you know, you, that, that confidence that you and I were at in Finland last week, you know, how often do we were talking about Russia and the threat? Keir Starmer made a speech recently where he talked about, you know, you know, we're looking at a possibility by 2030 that Russia might launch an attack upon um, a NATO country. So we do have to crank up. And by the way, Roy, I yesterday was at an event with Mick Mulvaney, who was Donald Trump's um, Chief of Staff for a while in his first term.

• 18:23Alastair Campbell?

  And he was very interesting about this. I mean, look, our politics are sort of way apart, but he did say something which really struck home. He said, look, I get why you feel the way you do about Trump and, and Ukraine, but you've got to understand most of the people in America, those things are thinking, hold on a minute, you Europeans, you're way richer than Russia. The European economy is a lot bigger than Russia's. Why do you keep looking to us? And it's sort of because Trump does it in the way that he does it, it brought it home to me that we we're not, we're not being serious enough about this threat and why the nature of European response has to change.

• 18:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, absolutely. Although I would say there is also a degree of gaslighting. There's a degree of Trump's people and the Republicans trying to dress up a very, very savage humiliating

• 19:15Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, for sure.

• 19:15Rory Stewart?

  series of retreats from NATO by suggesting it's somehow our fault and, you know, we should, and it's very tempting, I noticed for Europeans to fall into saying, well, we've got to be honest. We didn't spend enough of defence. Maybe Trump's got a point, etc. But the truth of the matter is that America, just on this for a second, all it needed to do, it didn't need to spend the money on Ukraine. It didn't need to keep pouring money into NATO. All it needed to do was when asked, will you hold to the Article Five guarantees, you know, when the Secretary of Defence asked, will you support a Baltic country with a tap by Russia, say yes. Because ultimately what America can do for us is find nuclear weapons. I mean, that was always the nature of their deterrent, going all the way back to the eighties.

• 19:58Rory Stewart?

  And so America doesn't get to get away with saying that this is just about us spending, but I agree, we're not spending enough. And there's much more we can talk about there. I mean, we've in the past had this discussion about what the hell happens if we start ramping defence expenditure up by tens of billions of pounds a year. That's a lot of money. And it's also something we don't admit enough to ourselves, that it's not a productive, a very productive form of investment. We like to tell ourselves very stories that maybe this is going to be great for our industrial base. What the Treasury would have been saying, and I've got some sympathy with them, is, hey, wait a sec. Look at the kit that you're talking about buying. A lot of this you're buying from the US.

• 20:39Rory Stewart?

  A lot of this is just British taxpayers' money being shipped over to the United States to buy exquisite American kit and employ American factory workers. So

• 20:48Alastair Campbell?

  And also, just to jump there on Russia, if you look at Russia, they did have a bit of kind of economic sugar rush on the back of, you know, suddenly being back in a major war. But it's now one of the reasons why their economy is struggling. So

• 21:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. There's been some very interesting modelling. I think the OECD and the World Bank and others have done it by economists. Just showing that a pound invested in defence historically simply doesn't return that much compared to a pound invested in infrastructure or education. So if what you're primarily trying to do is get economic growth, yes, you do defence by all means. If you think you're going to be attacked, it's vital for your national security. But don't kid yourself that that's an easy route to growing economy. Anyway, all that aside, I guess Healy, and again, if people haven't listened to the interview on leading, we're going to, I hope, post it again and give people a chance to listen to our conversation

• 21:44Rory Stewart?

  with Healy. I mean, he's a really unusual person. And as you say, he's not central casting for modern politics at all, right? We're going into an election where, you know, Wes Streeting is about to run for the leadership. He's barely been in since 2015. I mean, Keir Starmer's only been in parliament for just over 10 years. And previous prime ministers, you know, Rishi Sunak also only came in in 2015. Even Liz Truss only came in in 2010 with me. John Healy is a very different world, a world in which somebody can be in parliament for 30 years of, you know, have all, you know, reach back to Tony Blair, right?

• 22:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Rory Stewart?

  And he's somebody who, as you say, hasn't been briefing the press, hasn't been doing what traditionally if you were Gavin Williamson or Grant Shapps or Liz Truss, leading up to a resignation, you would have been taking Tim Shipman out for lunch and you would have been, and the Sunday Times or The Spectator would have been running stories for weeks, you know, he's on the verge of resignation, he's on the verge of, that's one of the reasons, I guess, why your colleagues are surprised, because actually in modern politics, they expect to be able to read in the pages of The Spectator or The Sunday Times, who's going to resign. And they're very confused if somebody resigns who hasn't been.

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, they do like, they do like to be ahead of the game.

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• 24:21Alastair Campbell?

  Let me just give you, Roy, somebody just sent me this, it's a statement by the trade body, ADS, for the aerospace, defense, security and space sectors, okay? Kevin Cragan. He says, "John Healy has consistently shown himself to be an intelligent, supportive, highly principled man who has the best interests of UK defense. Top of mind in everything that he does. His resignation today is something to lament and is truly a damning reflection on the current state of affairs. It should not take the resignation of an honorable man for the realization to sink in that we need this defense investment plan as soon as possible." So he is, he is respected and he, but he's a very, he's also a pretty canny political operator, John.

• 25:08Alastair Campbell?

  No, it could be, look, if I'm thinking a bit cynically. Has he had a conversation with Andy Burnham? Has he had a conversation with with Street? I don't know. I don't. I don't think so.

• 25:19Rory Stewart?

  Presumably presumably, though, he's odds on if either of them gets in to be back in as Defence Secretary or Foreign Secretary. I mean, if if it it's not not not a foolish move, right?

• 25:30Alastair Campbell?

  No, well, hold on, though, Rory. Only if they come in and are able to say we are going to be spending a lot more than Keir Starmer was going to spend. And then they have they then have to have the conversations that Rachel Reeves and others have been having with the other ministers to say that means taking this from you. And of course, where the Tories are zeroing in inevitably is on on welfare. Um. The event I did with Mick Mulvaney, the guy who was chairing it, we were just chatting beforehand and he said, look, I think the, you know, people have got used to this government. And by the way, it was another, I did another of my shy of hands. Yet again, a majority that wanted Keir Starmer to stay, but we'll part that for now.

• 26:10Alastair Campbell?

  But he he was making the point that he felt that the point at which people in his world started to lose a little bit of confidence was actually the the welfare vote, when the government was trying to get through the welfare changes and a backbench rebellion forced it down. So all of these problems, the problems that John Healy set out today, the problems that others are setting out, who if somebody replaces Keir Starmer, they're going to be in their entree from day one. So the same choices are going to have to confront us. So we're then back to the question that you and I have talked about basically since day one of this government, is how do you get the economy going again? And um, you know, they and I think they were doing pretty well on that until the Iran thing. That has set them back.

• 26:53Alastair Campbell?

  But this politically, this politically today, we're streeting, clearly it's damaging if you lose a Health Secretary. But when the country is in the state that it's in, when the public isn't yet, I don't think, fully educated about the full nature of the threats that we're facing, I think when your Defence Secretary resigns and when it's somebody who is actually seen as so loyal and seen as so reliable, that is pretty devastating.

• 27:18Rory Stewart?

  But just just on that one, I wonder whether, I mean, it helped me understand. I would say that what your analysis makes sense for a normal prime minister who's in for the long run.

• 27:32Rory Stewart?

  But if you're somebody who basically is not going to be Prime Minister in two, three months' time. I mean, how much more damage can he take? Does losing his Defence Secretary make much difference if in a week's time Andy Burnham's going to be running against him? I mean, so maybe he just thinks, yeah, this would be pretty damaging if I was going to be the Prime Minister and takes the next election. But really, I'm not really the Prime Minister anymore and I'm buggered if I'm going to be patronised by John Healy and he can go.

• 27:58Alastair Campbell?

  But I don't think he thinks, I don't think he thinks, I don't think he thinks he is going anytime soon. Um, and, you know, he's made that clear. And, you know, I think the other thing that I was hearing.

• 28:09Rory Stewart?

  But did you, sorry, Alice, explain that, sorry. I think most listeners don't quite get that. You, you think that he thinks this, that, what is it? He thinks Andy Burnham won't win in McAlfield? Or if Andy Burnham challenges in the autumn, he won't be defeated? He, he thinks there's a chance that he could still be Prime Minister in 12 months' time?

• 28:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, I don't, I don't have any doubt that he thinks that. Um, and the, and the reason I think he thinks that is partly because of this thing that I've been saying to you. That there's, there is this feeling amongst, you know, not pretty large sections of the public. Is this, are the Labour Government going to go exactly down the same track as the Tory Government and just keep changing their leaders when times get a bit tough? Secondly, I think he is probably persuading himself that, and this is the bit that I think a lot of his colleagues doubt, that he can do better, be better, operate better. Um, and I think that he's not convinced that Andy Burnham or.

• 29:12Alastair Campbell?

  So let's say Andy Burnham loses, he goes back to being Mayor of Manchester. That doesn't necessarily strengthen Keir Starmer's authority, which has been weakened by the fact of Andy Burnham trying to get rid of him. But, so let's say that then West Streeting becomes the, the name to go to for somebody who might challenge, or one of the others that we talked about before, Angela Rayner, whoever. So I think he thinks. He can beat any of them. Now, you may think that's crazy. Um, but if you are, if you have, we're back to the, we're back to the Tom Baldwin thesis that he's always being underestimated. It's almost like he's, he, he wants to have his back against the wall and that's when he comes out fighting, that's when he thinks he can win. Otherwise, you would just throw your hands up and go. So I, I, I think he does think that. And I also think that,

• 29:57Alastair Campbell?

  um, if and when it comes to it, you see, it was very, who was it today? Penny Mordaunt, Penny Mordaunt, put out a statement saying, well done, John Healy. At last, somebody putting country first, party second. If you remember, that was one of the big messages from Keir Starmer in the run up to the election, country first, party second. I think his general message that he'll try to communicate to the country in order to put pressure on the party, if and when there is a leadership election, is are we serious or not? Are we really going to ditch that idea of country first, party second? And I, I have to say, I, I, I talked about the whole sort of personal conversation thing and I, and I think this is a weakness. I think a lot of ministers say they don't, they don't really know him that well.

• 30:40Alastair Campbell?

  They don't really have kind of deeply personal conversations where he gets a sense of what they're thinking and, and all that stuff. If I were him, I'd be, I'd be on the phone to Andy Burnham. And I'd be saying, look, Andy, you're a talented guy, you've been a great mayor of Manchester. And I get it, you don't think I'm doing a great job and you think you can do better, that's fine. But I've just got to tell you, I, I, I feel I've got a right to stay and I told you this thing that somebody said to me, said to me in Redford. I think I have a duty to stay to show that I can do this better than you think I can. Meanwhile, I'm going to create this new department of constitutional change and development. I want you to be the big Mr. Devolution, blah, blah, blah. I would do that kind of thing. That's the sort of conversation.

• 31:22Rory Stewart?

  I, I, I agree, but you're, you're imagining Starmer, I'm afraid, uh, like your friend Tony Blair, who probably could do those sort of things. I mean, I, I imagine. Tony Blair probably could also have convinced his Defence Secretary to stay. Yeah, what do you say? You say to John Healy, listen, John, you know, we're all on the same page. I absolutely want to do this, you know, you saw me with Zelensky on Monday. You're so important to this. We just need a little bit of this and we'll do that then. And you can, you ought to be able to keep him on side, right?

• 31:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, maybe that is, maybe that is the issue. That's that, that, that, I mean, one of the, one of the guys I was talking to today. Um, said that is that, you know, we keep, we keep yearning, keep hoping for it to be better. Uh, the other thing that one of them said that, that, you know, they felt that the other day. And I'll just spit it out. He said, you know, I, we detected the hand of Morgan Mott Sweeney. Was when there was the, this line running out that Keir Starmer would sack any junior ministers who was backing Andy Burnham. I mean, you can't run, if, if, if your authority's been weakened already, you can't run things on the idea of fear.

• 32:34Alastair Campbell?

  You can only run things on the, the idea of, you know, having the vision, having the drive, having the leadership skills. And look, I think that what, what most of these guys will say, at times they see it, at times they see it, then at other times they don't. Um, but how he handles this is important. How he handles this is really.

• 32:53Rory Stewart?

  One of the things I love about doing live shows is we're getting a lot of comments. And I just want to firstly thank people who've been watching and sending in comments. Um, but also what the comments represent is a lot of our listeners beginning to think about, um. Strange dimensions that, that could go on. Like, so Tim Hanson.

• 33:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 33:12Rory Stewart?

  Three, seven, three, two, says, back to the 1930s, who's our Churchill? That's a very interesting framing, right? So in this thing, uh, you know, maybe people begin to feel that Starmer's a bit of a Chamberlain. And John Healy's a bit of a Churchill, who's kind of saying, here's this big threat from Russia. We need to rearm. You're not rearming. And he becomes the great thundering voice on the back benches, calling for a totally different strategy. Um, well, we've got David F Murphy. Does Healy's principled resignation put him in prime position to be Labour's John Swinney? John Swinney being, of course, the leader of the SNP, Scottish leader, who came in after Nicola Sturgeon, who sort of, it looks a little bit like John Healy from a distance. So there's a bit of a similar feeling to the two men, isn't there?

• 33:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Rory Stewart?

  Could he be the steady elder statesman who takes over to stop the bleeding? So anyway, I just thank you, everybody who's getting involved, because these are really interesting sort of historical comparisons, national comparisons. Puss, what do you think about Healy as the John Swinney of the Labour Party? There is a bit of John Swinney about him, isn't there?

• 34:13Alastair Campbell?

  There is, yeah, I mean, and that's not, that's not, that's not baldness, is it? You're not being baldness there. John really doesn't have, I think John Swinney has a little bit more hair than John Healy. By the way, Roy, I didn't realise the comments were coming in, but there's one of them that's exactly 4pm from Scotty Boy Rules 07, willing to absolutely guarantee it's Rory's fault that they're late. We were not late, we were bang on time. He'd have been.

• 34:39Rory Stewart?

  That's very loyal, that's very loyal.

• 34:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't like that. There's another one, Rory of the Tories is always late. Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Anyway, I.

• 34:51Rory Stewart?

  I'd like to say to everybody that I was on 15 minutes in advance.

• 34:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and somebody else.

• 34:56Rory Stewart?

  We're not going to be dragged into this kind of stuff.

• 34:58Alastair Campbell?

  There's also, there's also.

• 34:59Rory Stewart?

  Let's get back to the biggest use, let me, let me finish you with a, with a, with a final thing. Where are you at the moment on this Mcfield election? What, if you were a betting man, and I know you're not betting man, but if you were a betting man, you were trying to think where we're going to be in a couple of weeks' time, where Starmer's going to be. Is, is, or maybe I'm not going to put it on you. Do you think most of your Labour colleagues basically assume that Andy Burnham's going to win? And therefore he's going to mount a leadership challenge to Starmer in September?

• 35:29Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I think a lot of them have obviously been up there. In fact, um, I was talking to somebody today who said they locked up somebody's door, uh, to be told, oh, I had, um, Yvette Cooper yesterday, West Street the day before. He says, you know, where, where can I see, where can I see Bridget Phillipson? So they're all going up there. Um, I think it's going to be tight. I think it's going to be tight. I think Andy Burnham will win. I think most of them think he will win, but he might need a little bit of restore vote off reform. I think that's kind of happening up there. Uh, it's absolutely a two horse race. The, the stuff that in a normal universe really would

• 36:13Alastair Campbell?

  have damaged the candidate Kenyan and all the terrible things he says and his awful performance on question time, not to mention Farage and his stoking of the riots and Farage and his five million pound donation. They don't seem to be damaging as much as I think they should, and as much as maybe Labour hoped that they might. Um, but I think he probably will win. I wouldn't put my life on it, but he probably will win. I don't think we should expect that he's going to come in on Friday morning and announce that he's taking on Keir Starmer. Um, and I think that would backfire in the party if he did. Um, but I think there is an assumption that there will be a challenge at some time. Um, and I think there are very, very mixed views

• 36:57Alastair Campbell?

  of that. Um, the other thing, just my final point about the, the Keir Starmer operation, I, I, I was speaking to a couple of MPs, uh, earlier in the week who was saying they were amongst the ones who at the start signed that sort of round robin that Keir Starmer should stay, which I assumed was a piece of Downey Street or Whip's office operation. They said it wasn't, they just did it. Um, since when? They said, we've had no contact, we've had no encouragement, we've had no sense of, you know, what the plan is. Um, so I think it's kind of down, a lot of this is down to old fashioned political management just not being quite what it should be. And

• 37:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, um. Final thing, because we're going to finish, but a tip from a comment. So Andy Spears says, waiting for Andy to challenge will be toxic. He needs to do it immediately. So that's one of that's one of your one of your listeners watching there. So maybe something to think about when we do our coverage.

• 37:55Alastair Campbell?

  But the other thing that I feel, I know it's look, it's difficult for Andy Burnham because he's he's.

• 38:01Rory Stewart?

  I just got to give challenge. That's Jared Spears, four, four, zero, three. Thank you. Okay. Waiting for Andy. Andy challenge will be toxic. You should just do it instantly if he wins.

• 38:09Alastair Campbell?

  But you see, if you if you look at the way that and you've seen this in some of Andy Burnham's media appearances is that he's almost having to pretend that he's that he's doing something that he's not. He's running for election in Makerfield. He wants to put the place on his map and take the place as I they can go, et cetera. Um, and that means that he can't. I mean, for example, if he was suddenly to make a big speech about the future of defence spending, or, you know, our policy on Iran, people would start thinking, oh, hold on a minute, you're not the prime minister. What's going on? But actually, the thing that the Labour Party and the public need to know before there is any change is what he does believe and what he does stand for in terms of foreign policy, Europe, Middle East, all these big stuff that this big stuff that would be on his plate, straight away if he became prime minister.

• 38:50Alastair Campbell?

  So I think I think whether toxic is the right word, I think it is certainly going to be a period of really quite odd turmoil for the Labour Party. Um, which just underlines to me how sad it is to go from in less than two years from a landslide win to to this. It's just, it's not great.

• 39:10Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alissa, thank you very much. Thank you for everybody for getting on to this live show so quickly. And please do listen to our interviews with John Healy, listen to our interview with Ben Wallace. Um, and we are going to be fascinated to see what happens in this whole field. Thank you all very much. Bye bye.

• 39:26Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

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