John Healey – from York to defence secretary as he resigns

For Mr Healey, who resigned as defence secretary on Thursday (June 11), it was sport that would consume his years at Lady Lumley’s School in Pickering, then St Peter’s School in York for sixth form.

“I didn’t try hard enough in my work; I coasted, but I played every sport I could,” he told PoliticsHome in 2020, recalling his school days.

He said rugby, cricket and football were his favourite sports, but he did “anything that was going”.

Wakefield-born Mr Healey, who now lives in Rotherham, is the son of Aidan Healey OBE, a former deputy chief physical education officer of HM Prison Service.

He grew up in rural North Yorkshire, telling PoliticsHome he would “ride motorbikes and mopeds on the roads in the Yorkshire Moors with no crash helmets” and had learned to drive a tractor in fields aged 12.

Mr Healey, during a visit to Lady Lumley’s School in 2004, said: “I have really fond memories of my time in Ryedale.”

After leaving York, Mr Healey, now 66, studied social and political science at Christ’s College in Cambridge, receiving a BA in 1982.

He worked as a journalist and the deputy editor of the House, an internal magazine of Westminster, for a year in 1983.

He became a full-time disability rights campaigner in 1984 and was later campaigns director at the Trades Union Congress.

Road to government

It was in 1992 that Mr Healey first attempted to enter politics, standing an unsuccessful candidacy for Ryedale at the general election.

Mr Healey was elected as MP for Wentworth in 1997, going on to serve as a junior minister under Tony Blair and as local government minister then housing secretary under Gordon Brown.

Then economic secretary to the treasury John Healey chats to Katherine Turner, left, Ben Slater, Rhys Carlyle and Ben McCauley from Archbishop of York Junior School, Bishopthorpe, about the school website they worked on in the early 2000s (Image: Newsquest)

He was appointed as the shadow health secretary under Ed Miliband in 2010 but stood down from the role the following year and returned to the backbenches.

He returned to the shadow cabinet as housing secretary under Jeremy Corbyn from 2016 to 2020, then became shadow defence secretary.

He was appointed defence secretary by Sir Keir Starmer after Labour came to power in 2024.

He resigned from the role on Thursday, accusing Sir Keir of failing to properly fund the Defence Investment Plan (Dip).