LATIKA M BOURKE: Britain’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey kicks spending down the road

What a difference a promotion makes.

As Defence Secretary, John Healey left his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, out in the cold when he decided to plunge a knife into the premiership of his former boss, Sir Keir Starmer.

Mr Healey had been due to show his AUKUS partner around a British naval base but left Mr Marles high and dry to eviscerate Sir Keir, citing an urgent need to increase defence spending that his prime minister was ignoring.

Citing intelligence warnings that Russia could attack NATO by as soon as 2030, just three years away, Mr Healey reprimanded Sir Keir in his resignation letter.

“You know what defence needs,” Mr Healey chastised Sir Keir, warning that the decisions to delay funding defence would “leave the country less safe”.

Mr Healey’s criticism was as savage as it was consequential. Weeks later, Sir Keir was departing Downing Street, having lost the confidence of respected, wise heads, in his Cabinet like Mr Healey and earlier, the ambitious Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Both Mr Healey and Mr Streeting were handsomely rewarded for their courage that neatly aligned with their political ambitions and helpfully paved the way for Andy Burnham’s coronation as Prime Minister. Mr Burnham promoted Mr Healey to Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Streeting to Defence.

This week Mr Streeting launched a “national resilience conversation”, warning that the nation needed to be ready for war with Russia within 1000 days, or by 2030.

He sensibly urged Britons to stock up on supplies like canned food, first aid kits, batteries and manual radios in the case of an attack, natural disaster or a breakdown in infrastructure caused by a one-off attack.

But the urgency of his resilience plea did not exactly match the Government’s own actions, and Mr Healey’s in particular, when he handed down his first budget in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Defence came second-last in his speech.

“At the spending review next year, I confirm that I will set out the details of how we will meet our NATO commitment to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035, with a target date for 3 per cent in 2030. Today, I am getting work underway to get there in a fiscally sustainable way,” he said.

He announced £10 billion ($19b) in extra funding through loans, finance and weapons for Ukraine. And he also filled a £5 billion ($9.5b) gap that was going to be left under the Starmer government for immediate defence funding.

Mr Healey raided the banks, savers and landlords to raise taxes to funnel immediate £100 ($190) cash payments for 20 million households in England, as well as funding for the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments to deliver the same relief.

He described it as a budget delivering “breathing space” for working people.

Pressed by The Nightly on what “in a fiscally sustainable way” means, the junior Treasury minister Lucy Rigby said: “What he means is that we will be meeting our commitments on defence spending within our fiscal rules; both are absolute, it’s not that one caveats the other.”

The Labour chair of the Commons Select Committee on Defence Tan Dhesi said the delay was lamentable.

“There is a cost to inaction,” he warned.

“Investment in our nation’s defence and security cannot be kicked into the long grass. Our adversaries are not bound by fiscal years and spending cycles. We need to urgently rebuild our capabilities now, or we risk leaving ourselves seriously vulnerable in the event of a major conflict. It will take more than promises for the Government to transform its ambitions into reality.”

The opposition leader Kemi Badenoch was aghast, recalling her earlier praise of Mr Healey’s decision to quit, which she hailed at the time as courageous and principled.

“Is that it?” she said. “He should have set out a plan for 3 per cent today. So, now he is the man who is increasing risk to personnel on operations; he is the man who is making our country less safe; he has failed his own test.”

“This is on him, and no one will ever forget. If he had any decency, he would resign again today.

“He’s given himself a bit of breathing space until next year. Instead, what we have is a plan to have a plan. I bet (Vladimir) Putin’s really scared now.”

Raimond Kaljulaid, an Estonian MP from the centre-left Social Democrats party, watches the UK’s defence spending debate closely, as he chairs the Estonian Parliament’s parliamentary delegation to NATO.

From Tallinn, where the Russian-bordering Baltic state spends 5 per cent of its GDP on core defence spending, the UK is increasingly becoming viewed as an “all talk, no action” NATO ally.

“If you look at it from the position of the Kremlin, it’s encouraging,” he told a private London audience, including The Nightly.

And yet, such is the dire state of the UK’s poor defence spending, it is some progress to have the government state that they are targeting spending 3 per cent of GDP by 2030, even if there is no plan for how to get from the current level of 2.6 per cent within three years.

Sophia Gaston, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College London, said the Chancellor had bought himself more time, “to navigate the delicate dance that the Labour Government will pursue on welfare reform, while also raising the likelihood that spending commitments can be back-loaded into the next Parliament.”

“That said, it’s a huge step forward to have a concrete commitment towards reaching 3 per cent by 2030, and this provides a degree of accountability that ensures the next General Election will at least be in part fought on the battleground of defence.”

Ultimately, the issue of national security will be laid at the feet of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who in one of his first Prime Minister’s Questions admitted that “national security can’t come at the expense of social security.”

The Tories have been hammering Labour on defence spending ever since. When Britain heads to the polls is a subject of constant speculation. One is due in 2029, but Mr Burnham can go earlier to seek a mandate to deliver on his grand ambitions outlined at the recent Labour Party conference to rewire the British state to end neoliberalism and Thatcherism.

But there was none of that ambition in his first budget, where political priorities are laid out as opposed to imagined and promised.

And the tough decisions about how to fund defence spending, which will surely necessitate another government attempt to cut welfare, have been delayed for another year closer to polling day.

Labour continues to behave as though it has all the time in the world when it comes to deciding and delivering. In this respect, Starmerism continues to reign.