Labour rising star Al Carns resigns as Armed Forces minister – with PM in defence crisis

Al Carns, the minister for the Armed Forces, followed John Healey in resigning from the Government after an almighty Cabinet row about defence spending. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Carns warned that the UK faces a “more unstable and dangerous world than at any point in recent decades, and having spent most of my adult life in uniform, I understand what public service in such a moment demands”. “It is for this very reason I cannot continue,” he added. Carns, who has made it clear he will stand in any future race to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, is a former special forces commander who served five tours in Afghanistan and has been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. Echoing Healey’s resignation letter, Carns criticised the Government’s long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP), saying it is “neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded”. “I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box [sic] and defend a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task,” he said. However, the criticisms laid out in the former Royal Marine’s letter span well beyond defence. “The machinery of government itself has been left to decay,” he wrote. “Decisions that should take days take months. “Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it.” He also said that “too many working people in this country feel insecure even when they are doing everything right. They work hard, contribute, pay their taxes and still feel one setback away from trouble”. Carns went on to condemn the Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, saying it “risks failing the very veterans it claims to protect”. “These two failures are the same failure. We ask soldiers to fight for this country. In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it’s done. We are failing on both.” Announcing his resignation as defence secretary earlier, Healey said he had been “left with no other option” after being forced to make decisions that would make Britain “less safe”. In his letter to the Prime Minister, Healey said the proposal for spending in the DIP that he was given on Monday “falls well short” of what is required. He added that Starmer has “been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats”. Al Carns (right) is shown mine detecting equipment during a visit to RFA Lyme Bay in Gibraltar (Photo: James Manning/PA Wire) While Carns is a novice MP and minister, he is no stranger to Whitehall, having served as a military adviser to three defence secretaries: Conservatives Michael Fallon, Gavin Williamson and Penny Mordaunt. He was one of a small number of MPs in the 2024 intake to immediately be given a ministerial role after the election, with Starmer appointing him veterans’ minister. He was reshuffled to the Armed Forces brief in September last year. His decision to quit underscores the scale of the crisis facing Starmer. Healey’s resignation was a bombshell and left the Prime Minister scrambling for a replacement to carry through his beleaguered DIP. Nine hours after his resignation as defence secretary was made public, Downing Street announced his successor would be security minister Dan Jarvis. But the resignation of the Armed Forces minister and former Royal Marine commando is all the more damaging because he understands first-hand the nature of what is needed to defend Britain from the growing threat from Russia. In his damning letter to Starmer, Carns says it has “become clear to me that the change I had pushed for is not going to come”. The DIP is, he says, “not built for the threat we face”. Carns has seen what modern-day warfare is like, both as a Marine and a minister. His assessment – that the UK is “purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one” – is damning.