It’s not often a minister walks out the door while essentially handing his successor a damning verdict on the job itself. But that’s precisely what Al Carns did this week, resigning as Armed Forces Minister with a parting shot that the military simply isn’t “sufficiently funded.” Awkward timing, to put it mildly.
Carns departed alongside John Healey, the outgoing Defence Secretary, as Dan Jarvis stepped in to take the top job at the Ministry of Defence. The reshuffle itself wasn’t a surprise. The candour of the exit, though, was something else entirely.
The funding row at the heart of all this isn’t new. Defence chiefs have been quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, making the case for more money for years. Britain currently commits around 2.3% of GDP to defence, but pressure is mounting from NATO allies and opposition benches alike to push that figure higher, with 2.5% floated as the next threshold. The Treasury, naturally, has other ideas.
What makes Carns’ departure sting is that he wasn’t some backbench critic lobbing grenades from the cheap seats. He was inside the tent. His willingness to go on record about underfunding gives opposition voices fresh ammunition, and puts Jarvis in the uncomfortable position of inheriting both the brief and the mess on day one.
“The Armed Forces are not sufficiently funded,” Carns said, in remarks that will follow this government around for some time.
Jarvis, a former paratrooper who served in Afghanistan, brings genuine military credibility to the role. That background may help him in conversations with senior officers who’ve grown weary of civilian ministers who treat defence as a political football rather than a practical necessity.
Still, credibility only stretches so far without cash. The armed forces are grappling with recruitment shortfalls, ageing equipment, and a strategic picture in Europe that looks considerably more uncertain than it did five years ago.
Whether Jarvis can secure the funding his predecessor’s minister said was sorely lacking, or whether he’ll be making the same arguments from the outside in another two years, is the question that’ll define his tenure.
