Going to war with Burnham over military spending is another Starmer misfire

Fermat’s Last Theorem was a mathematical riddle that took the world’s finest mathematicians more than three centuries to resolve. The Labour government has rather less time to sort out what we may come to call “Starmer’s Last Misfire”.

One of the finest mathematicians of the 17th century, Pierre de Fermat left an unfinished note about Pythagoras and positive integers. The conundrum that Keir Starmer has set himself will now be for his likely successor, Andy Burnham, to complete.

It is as follows. The long-overdue Defence Investment Plan (DIP) – which determines how much Britain will spend on defence, and how – has to be ready for the British prime minister to present to the Nato summit in Ankara on July 7. If it is not, Donald Trump will be angry, other partners disappointed, Britain will look like an unserious country (the very thought!) and, more important even than that, Vladimir Putin will be delighted, again.

Starmer is determined to announce his defence spending plans – but who should proudly present this document to Nato? By rights, it should be a British prime minister in full control. However, it won’t be. Indeed, it cannot be.

In his speech on Monday, Starmer made it clear that nominations for the Labour leadership contest will open on July 9th, and close on July 17th. Burnham cannot possibly take over before the Ankara summit, nor, indeed review and draw his own conclusions about the DIP, as would be his supposed role as a new PM.

Cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo has told ministers, including Starmer, that they can’t do anything, shall we say, “creative” during the interregnum; a caretaker PM is not allowed to tie the hands of a successor. Starmer has been gracious enough to grant Burnham access to the civil service during the “transition”, but not, it seems, to allow Burnham to decide his own defence policy.

The two men and civil servants have reportedly had awkward conversations about this. Starmer knows – maybe fears – that if he turns up in Turkey without a viable DIP to boost UK defence spending, Trump will publicly humiliate him. But if all Starmer can offer as a now temporary leader is a measly 2.7 per cent of GDP Trump will also ridicule him. Burnham can’t represent the UK as he has no status, and can’t really tag along like a sort of WAG.

At the moment, therefore, Starmer’s Last Misfire is proving resistant to a solution.

And this time, the fault is all Starmer’s, maybe abetted by Rachel Reeves. He really should have found the money and finalised the DIP long before now – it was due last autumn. In that more ideal world, it would now be being implemented, and most likely accepted by Burnham as a fait accompli.

That didn’t happen. Instead, it led to the resignation of the defence secretary John Healey and his armed forces minister Al Carns, whose departure might well have sealed Starmer’s fate.

Some say Starmer is now trying to secure his “legacy”. That’s not an ignoble idea, but common sense suggests and history shows that prime ministers are best lauded to do that when they are most powerful – their earlier years in office. The government led by Tony Blair, for example, is remembered for the minimum wage, the Good Friday Agreement and the Iraq war; no one can recall the hurried policy initiatives he launched in his last doomed months in power, all shelved by his successor Gordon Brown.

Starmer’s legacy is already established – some good (rebuilding the party, winning his landslide), and some bad (botched welfare reforms, Mandelson, general dithering). He got his social media ban for the under-16s in under the wire, but it will probably need to be completed by Burnham.

I cannot see why what is still a hopelessly inadequate DIP would be anyone’s idea of a monument to their career, even less why it’s worth starting a war with your successor over. It’s a puzzle.