Former defence minister Al Carns has called for a “proper debate” on the country’s future and set out five “tests” that any contender for prime minister should meet. In a lengthy social media post on Wednesday evening, Mr Carns, rumoured to hold ambitions of succeeding Sir Keir Starmer, said the country’s new leader should be able to “say yes” to each point on his list. He stopped short of saying he would challenge Andy Burnham for the premiership or that he had the requisite support from Labour MPs to do so.
The five tests outlined by Carns
Mr Carns, an ex-Royal Marines officer who resigned from Sir Keir’s Government in a row over defence spending, listed his first test as spending 3% of GDP on defence being “the floor, not the ceiling.” The second test was fixing the crisis with youth unemployment. He went on to call for a target to add a trillion pounds to UK GDP within the next decade. A new leader should also set a handful of targets across the public sector such as health and re-offending and attempting to improve outcomes by 10%, he said. His final test was improving the UK energy infrastructure, including sourcing energy supply from the North Sea.
Carns emphasises the need for a new political deal
Mr Carns concluded: “None of this is complicated. It’s the oldest deal there is. You serve the country, the country stands by you. In uniform, in a hospital, in a classroom, on a building site. Right now that deal is broken, and everyone keeping our country going can feel it.” He added in the post on X: “That broken deal is the real reason for the frustration out there. It’s why trust has drained out of politics. And it’s why our party that won a landslide is, halfway through the term, already arguing about who leads it. But changing the person at the top fixes nothing if we don’t fix the deal underneath.”
Mr Carns said: “Swap one leader for another and leave the deal broken, and we’ll be right back here in eighteen months, asking the same question all over again. So I’m not interested in who gets what job. I’m interested in whether we’ve got the courage to pass these tests. We’ve been promised a debate. This is my opening offer to it. And if that debate ever becomes a contest, it should be fought on this ground, not on personalities. I know where I stand.”
