The Rest Is Politics - 542. Starmer Loses His Defence Secretary: What Next?

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

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: [e-mail] __________ 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

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics.com. This episode is brought you by Fuse Energy. Fuse has introduced the tracker tariff designed to give customers what matters most from their energy supplier, savings, clarity and a bit more control. And it guarantees that your rates stay below the off-gem price gap, which saves you up to two. 200 pounds. And the tariff updates automatically every quarter. Energy prices don't move in straight lines. Global events and market pressures you can't predict and certainly can't control, still find their way onto your bill. And if you're on the wrong tariff, you can be stuck with higher rates after the pressure has ended. With fuse energies track a tariff, that changes. If prices fall, your rate adjusts at the next quarterly update. And it's automatic. No

switching, no trying to second against the market. you're protected while prices are high and ready to benefit when they fall. Switch to fuse energies tracker tariff at fuseenergy.com slash politics and use code politics to get a free trip plus subscription. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to a live episode of The Rest of 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.

up because, out of the blue, breaking news, Defence Secretary John Healy resigned from the cabinet. Worse for Keir Stama, 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 line, which I suspect hit Kyr Stahma 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 Kier Stama 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 was being 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. And I guess it also begs the question, where does this leave Kyrgyz Stama on the authority front? So, Rory, where would you like to start with what is quite big news? I mean, I really want to get into the politics of this with you.

and it's something that you'll know much more about than me. And, you know, 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 strikes me there'll be a bit of a name duck 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 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. 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 power, Europe's leading military power to step up. And the honest truth of matter is they've talked about a 2.5% expenditure and then there's the target of 3%, and then there's a 3.5%, and then there's a 5%. And I remember all this because I was chair of the House of Commons Defense Select Committee. So we spent a lot of time going for this time. It's 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%, 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 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 18% 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 Russian invading

us is that we have these nuclear weapons that we can fire. So that would be a military that spent an enormous amount of nuclear weapons and then had some special forces in slavery. 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 our 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 1989, 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 about through the 90s, 2000s, 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 us that John Healy has found himself back over the deep. It is pretty grim.

When you look at the numbers of size of armed forces, equipment and kit that it'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 serve a prime minister and you're not keeping the country safe, which is, of course, what Kemi Bade, not the Troy leader has leapt upon.

I think the, you talk about the politics of this. I mean, I wouldn't rule out John Healy 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 1997 when we won the first of Tony Blair's three terms. His backgrounds 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 at a, I was at a charity dinner, Margaret McDonner, the former General Secretary of the Labor Party, who died of a brain tumor 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, 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 future. And if you'd have said to me at the start of this Parliament, here's, here's, here's Kirstama'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 being 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 Kyrsdauer have done together to boost our defences. So I think it's a very big thing. Can I just come on on on that? Just footnote from here. So I'm in Cumbria. and I was speaking to some people up in the train and then I was speaking to a Cumberin frontier all of whom were from the right, very much on the right. You kept voting, reform voting.

And their immediate response was oh, John Healy, I thought he was the good guy. He was the one that we liked. And the reason I just wanted to say that is that it's a reminder of something that Kiersama could have done but decided not to do. And it's a bit surprising that he didn't,

which is to lean into Labor being the patriotic party. of defense. Look, you can have an argument with the Treasury, and that's this where I'm afraid Rachel Reeves tends to get stuck, which is 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 until 2045? There are many more productive things we could do with the money if you're trying to kickstart the economy. So all that's

But you could imagine a different world in which a different type of leader would say, not having that conversation. I understand a lot of detailed points, but broadly speaking, we're in a different world. Putin, Trump, we're going to spend more in defense 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? 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 easier 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 Bacon 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. 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 relentless. And I wonder if John Healy just got to that point of saying, you can't reason with these people. Just quickly on the state, 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, you've got to do it, Richard Barron, and they come up with a recommendation. You've got to do it. You've got to do it.

And then if you give the impression that you're going to bring together a defense investment plan, which is going to meet the challenges set out in that review, you've got to do it. Yeah. And you've got to do it quickly. And you've got to keep your defense secretary on side. and that is good for Britain's defense, but it's also would be smart politics, because losing your defense 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 defense anyway.

They're going to have to spend on nuclear. They're going to have to spend on orchards. 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 Stama see this? The words, and just to underline that, the one part, I mean, people are going to have all their criticism of Keir Stama and, you know, he's faced plenty. But he has managed to develop this reputation as being pretty sound on foreign affairs and defence. So the one kind of really

strong point that he has in his favour, John Healy today has considerably undercut. And I mean, I was speaking to a couple of ministers in the immediate wake of this, and both of whom said they did not see this coming at all. They'd heard 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. But neither of the... 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 Kirstarmer has managed to develop this good relationship with Macron and Mercer, the E3, the European three big defense powers. and 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, 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 Stahmer's leadership, because of sort of everybody hanging around waiting for this by-election, it's almost like people think, well, we can't get stuff done. And so I don't know. 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 blackmailed,

or you say, I'm sorry, I'm not doing it. You can resign. And Stama'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, Stama decided to dig his heels in and let Healy go rather than give him what he wanted? Well, I don't know that 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 Kier Stahmer, but we probably won't get the true ins announce. 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 the moment. most people outside the government. 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's Tharmer 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. But 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

communication, all that. But I think when we are in this position, you know, that confidence that you and I were out in Finland last week. You know, how often do we were talking about Russia and the threat? Kirstama made a speech recently where he talked about, you know, we're looking at a possibility by 2030 that Russia might launch an attack upon 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 chief of staff for a while in his first term.

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 while you feel the way you do about Trump and Ukraine, but you've got to understand most of the people in America, those things they're 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're not being serious enough about this. threat and why the NATO European response has to change? 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 series of retreats from NATO by suggesting it's somehow our fault. And it's very tempting. I notice for Europeans to fall into saying, well, we've got to be honest. honest, we didn't spend enough of defense, maybe Trump's got a point, etc. The truth of 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 5 guarantees, you know, when the Secretary of Defense asked, will you support a Baltic country with South where Russia say yes. Because ultimately what America can do for us is fine nuclear weapons. I mean, that was always the nature of their deterrent going all. the way back to the 80s. 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

defense 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. 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. 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 I think you've got to. Yeah, there's been some very interesting modeling. I think the OECD and the World Bank and others have done it by economists. Just showing that a pound invested in defense 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 defense, 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 with Healy. I mean, he's a really unusual person. And as you say, he's not central casting for modern politics at all. We're going into an election where, you know, West Streeting is about a run for the leadership. He's barely been in since 2015.

I mean, Kirste-Starm has only been in Parliament for just over 10 years. And previous prime ministers, you know, Rishi Sunak also only came in in 2015. Even there's trust that he 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? Yeah. 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 Shaps 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 a. able to read in the pages of the Spectatial on Sunday Times who's going to resign, and they're very confused if somebody resigns who hasn't been. They do like they do lines be ahead of the game. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer.

Easy, breathable and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drape you denim wide leg. Let me just give you, Roy, somebody just sent me this 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 was the best interests of UK defense, top of mind in everything that he's. 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 honourable man for the realization to sink in that we need this defence investment plan as soon as possible. So he is, he is respected. But he's a very, he's also a pretty cany political operator, John. No, it could be, look, if I'm thinking a bit cynically. Has he had a conversation with Annie Burnham? Has he had a conversation with street? I don't know. I don't think so. Presumably, presumably though, he's odds on if either of them gets then to be back in as defence sexual or foreign section. I mean, if it's not a foolish move,

right? 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 Kirsten 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 welfare. 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 Kier Stahmer to stay, but we'll part of that for now.

But 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 welfare vote when the government was trying to get through the welfare changes and about bench 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 Kier-Starma, they're going to be in their entry from day one. So the same choices are going to have to confront us. So we 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 I think they were doing pretty well on that until the Iran thing. That

has set them back. But this politically, this politically today, West 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 solely reliable, that is pretty devastating. But just on that one, I wonder whether, I mean, help me understand, I would say that what your analysis makes sense for a normal Prime Minister who's in for the long run. 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? 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 patronized by John Healy and he can go. But I don't think he thinks, I don't think he thinks, I don't think he thinks he is going any time soon. And he's made that clear.

And I think the other thing that I was hearing today... Sorry, Alison, explain that, sorry, I think most of the sisters don't quite get that. You think that he thinks that... What is it? He thinks Andy Burnham won't win him in McAfield, or if Andy Burnham challenges him in the autumn, he won't be defeated. He thinks there's a chance that he could still be Prime Minister in 12 months time.

Yes, I don't have any doubt that he thinks that. 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 Labor government going to go exactly down the same track as the Tory government and just keep changing their leaders when times 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 colleagues doubt that he can do better, be better, operate better. And I think that he's not convinced that Andy Burnham or, so let's say Andy Burnham loses. He goes back to being Merrim

Manchester. That doesn't necessarily strengthen Kirstama'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 name to go to for somebody who might challenge or one of the others that we've talked about before, Angela Raina, whoever. So I think he thinks he can be any of them. Now, you may think that's crazy. But if you are, if you have, we're back to the Tom Volvin thesis that he's always being underestimated. It's almost like he's, 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 think he does think that. And I also think that,

if and when it comes to it. You see, who was it today? Penny Morden put out a statement saying, well done John Healy, at last somebody putting country first, party second. And if you remember, that was one of the big messages from Kirstama 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'll have to say, I talked about the whole sort of personal conversation thing. And I think this is a weakness. I think a lot of ministers say they don't really know him that well. They don't really have kind of deeply personal conversations where he gets a sense of what they're thinking and all that stuff. If I were him, I'd be on the phone to Andy Burlandi. And I'd be saying, look, Andy, you're a talented guy.

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 feel I've got a right to stay, and as I told you this thing that somebody said to me in Redford, I think I were a duty to stay to show that I can do this better than you think of I am. 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. I agree, but you're imagining Stama. I'm afraid, like your friend Tony Blair, who probably could do those sort of things.

I imagine Tony Blair probably could also have convinced his defense secretary to stay. What do you say? You say to John, he'd listen, John, we're all on the same page. I absolutely want to do this. 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 ought to be able to keep them on side, right?

Well, maybe that is the issue. That's that, that, that, that, that, um, I mean, one of the, one of the guys I was talking to today, um, said 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, we detected the hand of Morgan McSweeney was when there was the, the, this line running out that Kier's Tharmer would sack any junior ministers who was back. Andy Burnham. I mean, you can't run, if your authority's been weakened already, you can't run things on the idea of fear. You can only run things on the idea of, you know, having the vision, having the drive, having the leadership skills. And look, I think that what most these guys will say, at times they see it, at times they see it, then at other times they don't. But how he handles

this is important. How he handles this is really important. One of the things I love about doing live shows is we're getting a lot of comments. And I just wanted firstly thank people who've been watching and sending in comments. But also, what the comments represent is a lot of our listeners beginning to think about strange dimensions that could go on.

So Tim Hansen, 3-732, says, back to the 1930s, who's our Churchill? That's a very interesting framing. So in this thing, maybe people begin to feel that Starram is 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 backbenchers, calling for a totally different strategy. 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 SMP, Scottish leader, who came in after Nicholas 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 that? 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 a really interesting sort of historical comparisons, national comparisons. What do you think about Healy is the John Swinney of the Labour Party? There is a bit of John Swinney about him, isn't that? There is. Yeah, and that's not baldest, is it?

You're not being baldest 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 realize the comments were coming in, but there's one of them that's time exactly 4 p.m. 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. You don't mind. That's very loyal. I don't like that.

There's another one. Rory of the Tory, he's always late. Bloody hell. Bloody hell. I'd like to say to everybody that I was on 15 minutes in advance. Yeah. And somebody else. We're not going to be dragged into this kind of stuff.

Let's get back to the biggest use. Let me finish you with a final thing. Where are you at a moment on this McAfield election? 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 Starm is going to be. Or maybe I'm not going to put it on. 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 Stama in September?

I think a lot of them have obviously been up there. In fact, I've told somebody today who said they locked somebody's door to be told, oh, I had Yvette Cooper yesterday. Where street in the day before? You know, when can I see Bridgett Phillipson? So they're all going up there. 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. It's absolutely a two-horse race. The stuff that in a normal universe really would have damaged the candidate, Kenyon, and all the terrible things he says and he's 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 Labor hope that they might. 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 taken on Kirstama. And I think that would backfire in the party if he did. But I think there is an assumption that there will be a challenge at some time. And I think there are very, very mixed views of that. The other thing, just my final point about the Kier Starmer operation,

I was speaking to a couple of MPs earlier in the week who was saying they were amongst the ones who at the start signed that round robin that Kier Stahmer should stay, which I assumed was a piece of Downey Street or Wips Office operation. They said it wasn't. They just did it. 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. 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. Well, final thing, because we're going to finish, but a tip from a comment.

So Andy Sears says, waiting for Andy to challenge will be toxic. he needs to do it immediately. So that's one of your listeners watching there. So maybe something to think about when we do our coverage. But the other thing that I feel, I know it's difficult for Andy Burnham because he's... I just got to give a challenge. That's Jared Spears 4403.

Thank you for that. Waiting for Andy. And a challenge will be toxic. You should just do it instantly if he wins over here. But see, 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 the, he's doing something that he's not. He's running for election in

McAfeele, he wants to put the place on his map and take the place to as I can go, etc. And that means that he can't. I mean, for example, if he was suddenly to make a big speech about the future of defense spending or, you know, our policy on Iran, people would start thinking, oh, all the minute, you're not the prime minister and 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 plate straight away if he became prime minister. So I think it, 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,

which just underlines to me how sad it is to go from late in less than two years from a landslide wind to this. It's just, it's not great. Well, Alison, thank you very much. Thank you for everybody for getting on to this live show so quickly. And please do listen to our infuse with John Healy, listen to our infuse with Ben Wallace, and we are going to be fascinated to see what happens in this whole field. Thank you all very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.