Defence Secretary: ‘The Russian conflict led my son to join the Army. Now this is personal to me’

John Healey on facing an ‘era of insecurity’ and why Trump’s presidency won’t impact Labour’s strategy on the Armed Forces

In a high-windowed room overlooking Horse Guards Parade, John Healey carefully places his coffee – extra strong, with milk – on the carpet.
“You know the story of this room? It’s where the Duke of Wellington and Lord Liverpool learnt that Napoleon had escaped from Elba. That triggered the events that led to Waterloo.”
In other words, it is where British military and civilian leaders worked out how to deal with a marauding European dictator whose wars of aggression brought the continent to the brink of ruin.
“Plus ça change,” he winks, “as Napoleon might have said.”
The venue was not Healey’s idea – it seems to have come from one of his staff, and he hastens to clarify that he does not see himself as Wellington when the Telegraph’s photographer asks him to pose next to the Duke’s green-leather-topped desk.
But it drives home the message he wants to get across.
While some in Whitehall might see Donald Trump’s re-election as something approaching an existential moment, Healey might be forgiven for taking a longer view.
As in Wellington’s time, Britain’s most serious security challenge is on the continent and, yes, comes from a megalomanic dictator with imperial ambitions.
As in Wellington’s time, the balance between civilian and military leadership is paramount.
And as then, as in the First and Second World Wars, and as in Ukraine today, “your Armed Forces are only as strong as the industry that stands behind them and the society that stands behind them,” as he puts it.
It is a daunting time to be a defence secretary. The war in Ukraine has brought Russia and Nato closer to war than ever. The Middle East is on the brink of regional conflagration. And the US intelligence community assesses that China’s best window of opportunity for invading Taiwan will open in 2027.
In other words, if World War Three is coming, it is likely to come on his watch.
“That’s not my assertion at all. But we are undoubtedly in an era of insecurity.
“It weighs heavily on me as Defence Secretary, knowing that if we face conflict, it will be my decision to send British forces and personnel into situations which puts them at risk. It’s a responsibility of the post, but now it’s personal as well.”
Healey’s son Alex, in his late twenties, is now an infantryman in the Army reserves, the Defence Secretary reveals.
“Not something I’ve talked about before. But in fact, it was Ukraine. So when Putin went in, in February 2022, the next day we were having lunch together and he said to me, ‘Dad, if I were Ukrainian, I’d join up today.’ And it was very soon after that he came to me and to his mum and said, ‘I want to join up. I want to be a reservist.’ That’s what he’s done.”
Healey, whose wife, Jackie, works as his office manager, says Alex is driven by a desire to defend his country.
“It’s a bit old-fashioned, but he’ll talk about King and Country. It’s a recognition that there is something fundamentally important about our country and what we stand for that he wants to help defend.
“I don’t think you can talk to anyone in uniform, reservist or full-time, who would not say that at the heart of their motivation and commitment is service.”
Healey continues: “He does his day job, and then the reserve makes demands that his day job and his day-to-day life simply doesn’t. Physical demands, time, of course, emotional, but in a way also it’s a higher commitment.
“I can understand better the feeling of the families of those who… I hope it doesn’t happen, but if necessary, I will have as Defence Secretary to commit to conflicts where they may be at risk.”
Healey’s father was briefly in the Border Regiment, but after breaking an arm in a parachuting accident quit to become a teacher. Born in 1960 in Wakefield, Healey studied social and political science at Christ’s College, Cambridge and before entering politics worked at charities campaigning for disabled people.
In Tony Blair’s government he held a series of junior ministerial roles but never in foreign policy or defence. Before Sir Keir Starmer gave him the shadow defence brief in 2020, he was shadow housing secretary.
In May, before Rishi Sunak called the general election, Healey visited Kyiv, on a trip that informed his views on the imperatives of defence: technological and industrial capacity, and the armed forces’ reliance on those not in uniform. The trip included a visit to a weapons factory.
“Two things [were] particularly striking there: many of those working had been forced to flee from the east of Ukraine, and so their contribution to supporting their families that were still on the front line was to try and make the equipment that would protect them, that would allow them to fight the Russians back.
“And the second thing was that they were saying, essentially, the life cycle of technology on the front line is about two months now. Within two months of Ukrainians creating manufacturing, putting new drones in the hands of their frontline forces, the Russians will find a way of countering them. So the pace of innovation, of manufacture, as well as the sort of whole commitment of society behind it is absolutely essential.”
He insists Trump’s re-election will not change the British calculus, or force a rethink of a Strategic Defence Review due to report in Spring. The president-elect has repeatedly accused European nations of failing to pull their weight when it comes to defence spending – saying that the US has long had to “pay for them”.
Labour’s promise to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence remains. On Friday night, the Telegraph disclosed that Starmer is poised to increase spending to reach the threshold within weeks of Trump taking office. Healey will not be drawn on when the government will lay out its plan and time table to get there.
In the meantime, he says, there is a lot of “unglamorous” work to be done on defence reform.
The Army now has a target size of 72,000 and is likely to fall short because of recruiting failures he blames on the previous government, which he has accused of “hollowing out” the Armed Forces. Asked if he recognises that the Army can’t get smaller, he says “I didn’t come in to see further cuts.”
But more important even than money he says, are the military personnel themselves and the public’s relationship with them.
To this end he has just come from a reception breakfast for veterans at Downing Street where he and the Prime Minister chatted with Chelsea pensioners, a 99-year-old D-Day veteran, and lean, young Invictus Games athletes in wheelchairs – survivors of Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than one veteran the Telegraph spoke to in preparation for this interview said the military covenant – the unwritten pact that the government will look after its troops – is broken: “a tick-box exercise not fit for purpose”, as one retired officer said.
From appalling housing, to a veteran support service many ex-servicemen feel treats them as an enemy, to repeated failures to address inappropriate behaviour towards female soldiers, morale is “at rock bottom,” said the former officer.
It’s a complaint of which Healey appears to be well aware.
On Friday, he and the Prime Minister announced an extra £3.5 million to help veterans at risk of or experiencing homelessness. When Labour came into government they announced a 6 per cent pay rise for Armed Forces personnel – the largest for more than two decades.
Healey has also promised to appoint an Armed Forces commissioner, a kind of Ofsted chief inspector for the military, empowered to inspect and hold to account the ministry of defence, and to which servicemen and women, veterans, and their families can take their concerns without fear of them being buried.
Can he promise that the new post will not, as some veterans fear, be answerable to the Ministry of Defence and the military chain of command, rendering it toothless? And that it would not be held by a military figure with instinctive sympathy for the system it is meant to be policing?
“Yes and yes,” he replies promptly.
As veterans and the country’s leaders prepare to gather around the cenotaph to mark Remembrance Sunday, it seems apt to reflect on the poppy, its place in the national conversation, and how a tighter relationship between the public and its soldiers may help deter – and if that doesn’t work, win – the looming global war of which we seem to be on the brink.
In recent years the Poppy has seemed in danger of becoming an object of division: figures on the extreme right and left have seized on it as a sign of patriotism or a war mongering. Could it be that as the generations who fought the World War die out, the act of Remembrance becomes more performative, with another bastion of national consensus besieged by the culture wars?
He pushes back. “For me it is still the opposite – it’s a time when all that stuff is pushed aside,” he says.
“But largely because last year we marked 60 years since the last national servicemen left their national service, so that generation that provided both the experience of fighting in the Second World War and that generation that provided the family connections with service and the forces is inevitably diminishing.”
“So I see part of my task as Defence Secretary to try and amplify what’s special about remembrance and in particular, if you like, educating … Telling the stories both of those who have served in the past and their heroism and sacrifice, [and] those in the forces now.”
Among many other things, that means the likes of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen must remain on the national curriculum.
“The war poets will tell the same sort of stories about the horror of war, the purity and importance of peace, the loss of comrades, that some of the veterans that you met at the breakfast this morning will tell about their own service life. It stands as literature, but also testament to those eternal sentiments.”
Healey appears to believe that Britain and Europe will have to do more of the heavy lifting on this side of the Atlantic, whether or not directly linked to Trump’s re-election this week. He would like Britain to be leading Nato’s European members in that effort and cites Labour’s ‘Nato First’ strategy under which European security is Britain’s “foreign and defence priority”.
“The ‘NATO First’ priority that we’ve set out as a government recognises that our defence as well as our treaty duties, lie principally with our NATO allies, and that we are most likely to be able to avoid the conflict that you talk of, and many fear, if we are better fit to fight, we’re stronger, and better able to defend Europe as a collective of 32 nations.”
“That’s why I argue that the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine. It’s why I argue that Estonia and the border with Russia is our front line, not just theirs. That’s the first task. It’s one of statesmanship. It’s one of diplomacy. It’s one of recognising the power of deterrence, and we haven’t in the past.”
“I also recognise that whether it was Harris or Trump that was elected, America is shifting its strategic priority and its focus, and will do so further towards the Indo Pacific. That’s a reality that all NATO nations must recognise.”
On Ukraine, without directly referring to reports Trump is considering pushing Kyiv into a land-for-peace deal, he states that the country has to be given “the freedom to decide how to balance fighting and talking.”
And he rejects the idea that Russia’s current momentum on the battlefield means it is unstoppable.
The latest figures from British defence intelligence, he says, show that the average daily Russian casualties (killed and wounded) in Ukraine reached a new high during October, with an average daily loss rate of 1,354 per day.
This is the second straight month that Russian forces have suffered new war high average losses and makes last month the most costly of the war for Russia, with a total of 41,980 casualties.
According to UK defence intelligence, the previous high was 39,110, recorded in May 2024. They estimate that since the start of the conflict Russia has likely suffered more than 696,000 casualties.
Putin is spending 40 per cent of his budget on defence, which is unsustainable. Many analysts believe Putin will have trouble maintaining that kind of effort beyond 2025.
In blunt English, is Healey saying Ukraine and the West can win the war of attrition?
“The West can and must,” he replies.