June 22, 2026

A New Prime Minister, and Getting the Brits Ready to Fight

By: Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend

On June 22, United Kingdom (UK) prime minister Keir Starmer announced that he would resign as leader of the Labour Party and leave the premiership. Starmer had faced mounting pressure to hand the position over to a new leader after local elections in May that were disastrous for the party, but the decision came after Labour’s Andy Burnham, popular mayor of Greater Manchester, won a special election for a seat in parliament and signaled on June 19 that he would use it to challenge Starmer for leadership of the country.

All of this comes after both the UK’s defence minister, John Healey, and armed forces minister, Al Carns, announced on June 11 that they had resigned from their positions. Both former ministers cited funding for the military as the reason for their departures. Healey issued a letter warning that the level of military spending proposed by Starmer “falls well short” of what is needed. Carns stated that the government’s defense investment plan was “neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded.” The plan, which lays out the funding for military equipment and services, has faced months of delays amid budget disputes within the government. Earlier this month, Chief of the Defence Staff Richard Knighton also said that the UK is running out of time to boost defenses in response to Russian threats, and that risks to the country are greater than at any time since the Cold War.

The UK’s struggles highlight two questions that Europe has yet to answer: Can governments generate the political support needed for significantly higher defense spending? And with the United States playing a smaller role, who will provide the leadership needed to organize and drive Europe’s security efforts?

To discuss all of this and more, we are excited to welcome back to Brussels Sprouts Shashank Joshi and Tom Wright.

Please note that this episode was recorded on Friday, June 19, before Starmer’s official resignation but when it was clear that he would be challenged.

Shashank Joshi is the incoming Washington bureau chief at The Economist and was previously the publication’s defense editor.

Tom Wright is a senior fellow with the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution.

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