Dan Jarvis has been appointed secretary of state for defence following a day of upheaval in which his predecessor, the armed forces minister and a parliamentary aide all resigned in protest at the government’s defence spending plans.
The Barnsley North MP, a former Parachute Regiment officer who served in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, was confirmed in the role by Downing Street on Thursday evening, less than an hour after armed forces minister Al Carns walked out of government and just hours after John Healey dramatically quit as defence secretary in a dispute with Number 10 and the Treasury over the funding settlement behind the long delayed Defence Investment Plan.
His appointment makes him the first defence secretary since Ben Wallace to bring direct military experience to the post, and he arrives with arguably the deepest operational background of any holder of the office in the modern era.
How the day unfolded
Mr Healey resigned on Thursday morning after receiving a financial settlement for the Defence Investment Plan which he said fell well short of what the armed forces require, and which he claimed the prime minister had been unable, and the Treasury unwilling, to improve.
Under the proposal, defence spending would rise from 2.6% of GDP next year to just 2.68% by 2030, which is understood to amount to an uplift of around £13.5bn, less than half of the £28bn that service chiefs had reportedly said was needed to fund the transformation set out in the Strategic Defence Review.
In his resignation letter, Mr Healey warned that the settlement would force him to take decisions that would reduce the readiness of the armed forces, increase the risk to personnel on operations and could make the country less safe. He argued that while the government has committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035, the trajectory set out in the plan moved far too slowly, with the heaviest pressure to improve warfighting readiness falling in the next two years rather than over the next decade.
Mr Carns, a former Royal Marines officer, followed him out of the door on Thursday evening, telling the prime minister in a blunt resignation letter that he had sat in the rooms, seen the assessments and spoken to the commanders who would be asked to do more with less, and that he could not in good conscience stand at the dispatch box and defend a level of investment he knew to be inadequate to the task. He added that a serious country funds its defence to meet the threat it actually faces rather than the threat it wishes it faced, while parliamentary private secretary Pamela Nash also resigned, citing the delays and difficulties in securing funding for the plan.
Sir Keir Starmer rejected the criticism, insisting that the Defence Investment Plan will provide the resources the military needs to keep the country safe, along with the clarity the British defence industry needs to plan and the certainty required to attract private finance. Announcing the appointment of Mr Jarvis, the prime minister said his first duty was to keep the British people safe, and described his government as delivering the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War.
That is the political backdrop against which the new defence secretary takes office, because he must now own, finalise and defend in parliament the very settlement that prompted two fellow veterans to walk out of the department he has been asked to lead.
Who is Dan Jarvis?
For readers of this publication, Mr Jarvis requires considerably less introduction than most politicians who arrive at Main Building.
Commissioned into the Parachute Regiment, he served as a platoon commander with 1 PARA, as aide-de-camp to General Sir Mike Jackson and as adjutant of 3 PARA, before working as a staff planner at the Permanent Joint Headquarters and at Army Headquarters following his promotion to major. He went on to command a company in the Special Forces Support Group, and he was appointed MBE for his military service.
In 2011 he became the first person since the Second World War to resign his commission in order to contest a parliamentary by-election, which he won to become the Labour MP for Barnsley Central. He served in a series of shadow frontbench roles, sat on the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy between 2017 and 2019, and in 2018 was elected the first mayor of South Yorkshire, steering the region through the pandemic and severe flooding before returning to the Commons full time.
He was appointed shadow security minister in September 2023 and, following Labour’s victory at the 2024 general election, served as security minister in the Home Office, where he led on counter terrorism policy including the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, better known as Martyn’s Law. Boundary changes mean he has represented Barnsley North since 2024.
Where he stands on defence
His record suggests a politician planted firmly in the mainstream of Labour’s pro-defence tradition, and one who has at times been well ahead of his party on the issue.
He voted in favour of renewing the nuclear deterrent, backing the replacement of Trident with a new system during the 2015 to 2016 parliament, and during the Corbyn years he went as far as hinting that he might have to leave the party altogether if it abandoned its commitment to the deterrent. In December 2015 he was one of the most prominent Labour voices making the case for RAF airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State in Syria, arguing publicly that the case for action outweighed the case for inaction, a position that drew heavily on his own experience of commanding troops in Afghanistan.
His wider voting record shows a loyalist, with TheyWorkForYou recording a 97% alignment with fellow Labour MPs over the past year across more than 300 divisions, although he has rebelled when he judged it necessary, most notably by opposing a second Brexit referendum at a time when most comparable Labour colleagues supported one. During the Corbyn era he was repeatedly touted as a potential leadership challenger from the moderate wing of the party, although he ultimately declined to enter the contest.
The in-tray
The new defence secretary inherits a formidable workload, with the immediate priority being the Defence Investment Plan itself, which the government had reportedly hoped to publish this week before the resignations intervened. Beyond that sit the delivery of last year’s Strategic Defence Review, the task of sustaining support to Ukraine, the need to reassure allies ahead of key NATO engagements, and the longstanding pressures on personnel retention, equipment availability and readiness that his predecessor cited on his way out of the building.
He will also need to steady a department in which, by the accounts of those who have just left it, military chiefs believe the funding on offer falls dramatically short of the task, while veterans’ organisations have already warned that personnel will be looking for leadership in the wake of Mr Healey’s departure.
There is an obvious personal political risk in accepting the job, because his credibility in Westminster and within the armed forces community rests substantially on his service record and on his reputation for speaking plainly about defence. If he concludes, as Mr Healey and Mr Carns did, that the settlement is inadequate, he will face the same choice they faced, and if he defends it, he will be asked why his judgement differs from that of two fellow veterans.
What is not in doubt is that the Ministry of Defence is once again led by someone who has carried a bergen, commanded soldiers on operations and planned campaigns from inside PJHQ. Whether that experience translates into a better settlement for the armed forces is the question on which his tenure, and arguably the government’s wider credibility on defence, now depends.
He has the CV for it. But if he tries to pass this sham off as good for the military instead of following Healey out the door, then it’s betrayal of the highest order
I’m hoping he resigns as well to show up HMG even more.
Me too, once he’s had a look at the detail in the DIP he walks out the door. Rather think we might be disappointed on that front
I’ve gained $17,240 only within four weeks by comfortably working part-time from home. Immediately when I had lost my last business, I was very troubled and thankfully I’ve located this project now in this way I’m in a position to receive thousand USD directly from home. Each individual certainly can do this easy work & make more greenbacks online by visiting
following website—.,.,.,.,.—>>> JobatHome1.Com
He needs to threaten to resign if more money is not forthcoming.
Yes, that will get things done, then the Treasury and the PM’s office will be falling over themselves to give the MoD any money it wants 😀
We need to get the DiP out no matter how much new money is in it or not, if we need to make cuts then so be it, the never ending paralysis and political instability is a far bigger threat to the nation and European security than any defence capability that £5 or £10 billion spent over five years could generate.
Jim, cuts to what? The armed forces are barely functioning. The PM needs to tell his Chancellor and the rest of his party that cuts will be made to Welfare to fund Defence. Apparently, working-age benefits have increased by over £50 billion since 2019. On the Money Saving Expert website it states that benefits are potentially payable to someone earning up to £50k in some circumstances. That’s ludicrous.
He looks and sounds the part BUT he still has Starmer, Reeves and co. to contend with.
No he doesn’t, his job is merely to get the DiP published and out of the way before the NATO summit and steady the ship before the labour leadership election in a few months. After that he will be out of a job.
What ever internal dialogue there was between The Treasury, The MoD and the PM’s office is done. The MoD has permanently f**ked itself by over reaching because it thought it was in a stronger political position than it was.
In 2024 moving to 2.7% of GDP on defence spending would have been the MoD’s wildest dream. A sum far in excess of what the last government was prepared to spend. Despite that rise they have managed to cause a political scandal big enough to loose a Secretary of State a PM and a Chancellor.
Granted all three needed to go but it means anyone else coming in after, be it Burnham, Badenoch or Farrage will stay well clear of defence spending. There are no votes in it and even when increasing the budget it’s now a political negative.
If I were in his shoes I would acceept the plan publicly and state that I would be pushing for the remainder that is needed. I would do this on the basis that this moderate increase is better than no increase at all, but would publicly lay out the compromises that now need to be made and the risk being held.
It won’t work out good for the forces labour will protect benefit spending at all cost and certainly won’t lower Net Zero or money to support illegal immigrants.
The push for net zero is only good for the economy.
Fastest growing sector after AI and gives us cheaper energy than fossil fuels, while reducing our exposure to things like the closure of the Straits of Hormuz.
It doesn’t though does it ? Never that simple. Energy companies bid for contracts. Whosever gets in last with the highest bid, the rest are paid otherwise why bid at all. There was an extensive article about this on BBC, wherein solar is doing well but UK isn’t a solar country. Wind turbines on other hand are still rather niche and expensive to setup. If net zero is making things cheap, NOONE is seeing it. Wake Up ! FFS. Stop using the name Spock, you are disgrace to common sense let alone logic.
Rounding errors mate. Welfare and the state pension are gumming everything up
Levi, State Pension Triple-Lock won’t be changed until after the GE in 2029. Then anybody with a brain (!) will remove NAE and take an average of RPI and CPI. Much, much bigger deal is the amount of ‘working age’ benefits being paid. There’s about 2.8 million people signed-off as long-term sick. Even those that are working can often claim additional benefits and Money Saving Expert website uses an example of being able to claim benefits when someone is earning up to £50k!
As long as he throws away his politicians hat and puts military one on, we should get clear leadership.
Best of luck to Dan Jarvis!
When the idea of the DIP was first announced, I assumed that it would be MoD-authored but with the funding level dictated by HMT who were well aware that the intention of the DIP was to state in fine detail how the recommendations from the SDR could be funded and met, together with equipment and infrastructure programmes and personnel costs etc. I also expected HMT to exercise some sort of overwatch over the MoDs work.
Now it is said that Healey and Carns had little input into the DIP and did not know until Monday what the ‘settlement figure’ from HMT was – £13.5bn. That is astonishing. How can a DIP be writtten over a long period (June 2025-May/June 2026?) without MoD ministers and DIP authors knowing how much cash is available?
I think Mr Jarvis will be a good fit for Defence minister but the draw back like and elephants foreskin is he has to tow No10/No11’s line and I do not think he will last long trying to convince guys waiting for kit or in fact that there is no kit comming and trying to convince the guys that the government has their back he will do what Healey did and throw in the towel which is a shame as what the country needs is stability but that is one thing the people in the house of commons from all sides seem unable to give the country.
He may be a fine guy no doubt ,but at end the end of the day if there’s no money in the pot it’s not going make any difference .Be interesting to see what he has to say about is new position .From what I’ve read he has experience for the role but unless he has a magic wand don’t see the point .Or is he there to pick up a monthly wage. We’ll have to wait and see.