{"id":593012,"date":"2026-05-19T19:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/593012\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T19:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:14:08","slug":"uk-defense-secretary-tells-labour-leadership-hopefuls-dont-you-know-theres-a-war-on-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/593012\/","title":{"rendered":"UK defense secretary tells Labour leadership hopefuls: \u2018Don\u2019t you know there\u2019s a war on?\u2019 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership has been dealt a severe blow over the past fortnight as almost 100 MPs said that he should set out his timetable to step down as prime minister. Several of his ministers, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, have resigned to trigger a contest to replace him.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier on Tuesday, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was selected as Labour\u2019s candidate for the Makerfield by-election. He has been talked up by several Labour MPs as a potential successor to Starmer and as one of the few politicians in their party viewed positively by the electorate.<\/p>\n<p>Reform UK, which is leading the polls in Britain, has pledged to \u201cthrow absolutely everything\u201d at the by-election.<\/p>\n<p>POLITICO has also reported that Healey\u2019s junior defense minister, Al Carns, is being urged by MPs to consider a leadership bid. Two government officials suggested that he should not have written a frank post-mortem of Labour\u2019s local election loss for the New Statesman last week.<\/p>\n<p>Healey told the event that it has been a \u201cdifficult few weeks\u201d and that \u201cFor Labour, the last 10 days has been tough,\u201d as he warned that his colleagues have \u201cturned in on ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a warning to those seeking to unseat Starmer, he said that he has \u201cnot forgotten the pains\u201d of being in opposition, adding: \u201cWe must not throw away so lightly the power we were given.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership has been dealt a severe blow over the past fortnight as almost 100 MPs said&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19306,625,140,461,59,57,58,555,465,1805,420,50,56,54,55,7747],"class_list":["post-593012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-andy-burnham","tag-british-politics","tag-defense","tag-elections","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-industry","tag-investment","tag-john-healey","tag-keir-starmer","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wes-streeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}