[Abernathy]

It’s becoming quite apparent, I think, that Carns does have serious designs on becoming Prime Minister, and sooner rather than later.

Hence, it’s time for him to get his own Mailwatch thread.

But I still know almost nothing about him. Scottish (like me! ). A hard bastard (unlike me !). An all-action decorated military hero (definitely not like me). I think his politics might be described as right-of-centre, and he probably gives Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Burgon conniptions.

I’m also not really sure how much support he has, both in the PLP, which he needs to be able to get into any leadership contest, and across the party membership, which of course has the final say in who gets the leadership.

But there does seem to be a sense of a Carns bandwagon beginning to roll.

Any thoughts, Mailwatchers ?

[The Weeping Angel]

Didn't he say he wasn't going to stand? A lot of it is just hype; he's a decent MP, but he's not ready to be PM.

[Youngian]

Have to see more of this guy to make a call but don't expect the 'sport are troops' brigade to switch to Labour because they've put Captain Hurricane in charge. Those wankers would still put Farage into No 10 even if he was caught red handed taking Kremlin cash.

If Putin is intending to expand his war onto NATO turf, I'd be even less enthusiastic about having Burnham in charge. When he is ever uttered anything related to defence or geopolitics?

[Tubby Isaacs]

The resignations were over £4.5bn over 5 years. Was it really worth all this bother? I’m sure Healey has already compromised but so has Reeves. Where does he suggest she get the extra money from?

[Abernathy]

Didn't he say he wasn't going to stand? A lot of it is just hype; he's a decent MP, but he's not ready to be PM.

He was a bit metaphorical about it - some bollocks about not being afraid of gunfire when the starting gun gets fired - but I think it's very clear he does intend to go for it.

[Boiler]

If Putin is intending to expand his war onto NATO turf, I'd be even less enthusiastic about having Burnham in charge. When he is ever uttered anything related to defence or geopolitics?

To Burnham, geopolitics is "outside Manchester".

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Carns comes across as a complete wanker with no idea of how government works in this article:

https://observer.co.uk/news/politics/ar ... ems-at-mod

That afternoon, the national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, rang Carns to inform him that Jarvis had been offered the top job, sounding him out about taking on the vacated security minister brief. Sources said they believed Carns had agreed to stay on board; but that evening he also quit, saying the Dip was “neither transformative enough, nor sufficiently funded”.
A government source said: “We wanted to make it work – he wanted to be on TV.”
However, Carns attacked that account of his decision to quit as “spin”, saying it was designed to “neuter my voice… remove the story, and reduce the impact and steady the ship”.

Led to this comment:

‪Twlldun‬
‪@twlldun.bsky.social‬
*Someone* has convinced himself he’s Billy Big Bollocks, eh

[Tubby Isaacs]

It’s Bertie Big Bollocks. But yeah.

[Samanfur]

It's always been Billy where I come from, too. Must be a regional thing.

[Oboogie]

Billy in my childhood (divided between Birmingham and Guildford).

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've got a definitive source on this one. The locus classicus, if you will. John Sitton's half time rant. The age restriction isn't a marginal call, btw.

[Abernathy]

Carns must be serious (or perceived to be a threat) - The Daily Mail’s been digging dirt on him (copied from The Dispatch, not the Mail).

Labour’s Selly Oak MP Al Carns is being supported in his bid to become prime minister by a convicted fraudster, the Daily Mail has revealed. The former defence minister, who resigned from cabinet last week after a bust-up with Keir Starmer over defence spending, has close ties to local businessman and charity CEO Paul Cadman. Prior to his tenure at a charity, Cadman was jailed for five years in 2005 for scamming the government out of £1m in apprenticeship scheme funding. The entrepreneur (who is the brother of the former Birmingham city council CEO Deborah Cadman) made fake student profiles using names including James Bond and Bill Clinton to get the cash. Since then, he has become a prominent figure in the Birmingham business and civic sectors and the CEO of the now-liquidated apprenticeship charity Steps to Work. According to sources who spoke to the Mail, Carns uses Cadman to introduce him to influential figures at events and the pair share the same public relations advisor. When the Daily Mail reached out to the pair, Carns declined to comment but Cadman said: “'I've made mistakes in the past, all of which I've learned from, turning my life around and helping others along the way.” (Daily Mail).

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't need to hear more from Al Carns for a while.

There comes a point when honesty requires action. And for me, that point came last week.
As honourable members know, I came into politics for one reason. That was to enact change.
But to be able to work out where you’re going, we must realise where we have come from. The Labour party I joined is one that was chiselled out of the mines of the north east. It was hammered out of the shipyards of Govan, Liverpool and Belfast. And it was forged in the factories of the industrial revolution.
Calloused hands, sore backs, people who did a hard day’s graft and asked for one thing in return – a government that has their back.

Yeah, Starmer. Just give everybody a lot of money and reindustrialise.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Unfortunately, I've heard from Al Carns again.

In his speech Carns also said he thought the defence investment plans was not sufficiently funded.

But he then went on to spent more time talking about another reason for his resignation – his opposition to the Northern Ireland Troubles bill. On this, he went even further than he did in his resignation letter last week – because he suggested the legislation would help republicans achieve what the IRA was fighting for

The IRA stopped 30 years ago, Al. Go and join Kemi and Farage.

[Youngian]

Fans of Veep may be reminded of Hugh Laurie's slick confident senator Tom James. Thinks he's the Big I am with his eye on the top job. Until he steps up and makes a hash of his big moments to reveal his inadequacy for top office.
Carns is also opposing net zero because energy security should be the top priority.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is like Jez rubbish, the idea that people vote for the brilliant local candidate, not the Labour Party.

[Youngian]

No subject is out of bounds for Action Man Al. Today its the complexities of the brewing trade

[Tubby Isaacs]

In fairness to him he's working with the relevant minister there. I don't know if he's making a rod for her back there with his straight talking common sense, but she looks happy enough.

[Abernathy]

I am very mistrustful of Carns. He seems brimming with ambition, but seems to embrace the Groucho Marx school of political principles - he has apparently admitted to having been a Tory voter in the past.

When Blair was running to be leader of the party, I recall that one of the political commentators described him as a “pot-bound politician” : someone who had no roots in the party. That struck a chord with me, and I recall that I voted against the tide for Margaret Beckett, as I thought she had done a terrific job taking over after John Smith had died and deserved to continue.

Okay, I was probably wrong (though not entirely) about Blair, but I’m getting very similar bad vibes from Captain Carns.

[Abernathy]

Tom Watson has written about Carns .

I’m told that an arm-wrestle with Al Carns has become the most popular auction prize at Labour MP fundraisers. The ritual sounds like a joke but it captures something serious. Carns is liked, Carns is admired, Carns has become a kind of political celebrity. The doubt, and there is doubt, is whether an auction-winning arm and a medal-studded chest are quite enough to lead a party.


My connection with Carns is thin. I once offered him a word of encouragement in the Strangers’ Bar when he was first appointed. I am fairly sure he had no idea who I was. But even then, he had presence. Some politicians enter a room. Carns occupies it.

A colleague told me a story. He knocked on a door and the man on the step told him he was voting Labour now. Carns had saved his brother. The brother had been shot, and Carns had carried him off the mountain, under fire. I cannot stand the story up and I am not going to try. But I understand why a story like that could turn a vote, and why it follows Carns the way such stories once followed another soldier who went into Labour politics.

Clement Attlee came back from the Great War as Major Attlee and wore the title for life. At Gallipoli he was carried down to the beach himself, felled by dysentery, then returned to command the rearguard at Suvla Bay and left on one of the last boats out. “I left with the last party just before General Maude,” Attlee wrote in his 1954 autobiography, As It Happened, with the flatness of a man describing a bus queue.

That is the comparison worth making, and the only one I will make. Not the medals, though Carns has more than Attlee. The instinct. The man who stays to the end of the evacuation. The commander who does not leave his people stranded. The leader who has been carried and who carries others in turn.

The dots, and how they join
Start with the facts, because they are remarkable. Multiple tours of Afghanistan, a Military Cross, a Distinguished Service Order and an OBE. A London to Everest summit and back journey completed in seven days. A resignation letter, sent last week, that read less like an exit note than an opening argument. Those are the dots. The question is how they join.

Seasoned hands will have noticed the slightly amateurish media plan that followed his resignation. For about 36 hours, Carns seemed to say yes to every interview going, delivering several messages at once and leaving people less than clear about why he had walked out. I found myself wanting to tell him to do up the second button on his shirt, and kept wondering why nobody had put him in a tie. Yet that rawness may be part of the appeal. His Instagram account is compelling for exactly that reason. It is direct, physical, unvarnished and oddly modern. The very things that made Westminster wince have made him travel online. In a week, he has gone from Labour establishment figure to Labour insurgent.

The parliamentary admirers have no doubts. “He’s the only Labour politician I know that can walk onto my council estates and demand immediate respect,” one MP told me. “He gets what it is to grow up there, he connects his values to that background to the Labour Party.” Another praised his way of leading, military in the best sense: “he listens, he takes advice, but he is willing to decide”. A third, a Scot, put it most carefully of all. “He has his own kind of version of rights and wrongs and fairness and opportunity which fit a Labour agenda without coming from any ideological Labour source.”

Even among those who like him, there is a note of caution. “He has come from a hierarchical career where you have to prove yourself to progress,” one minister told me. “He will learn that politics is much the same.”

Set against them the sceptics, the MPs who look at the medals and see a blank space where a politics should be. “He’s got a great backstory,” one said, “but most MPs feel burned by choosing someone as leader who had no real political hinterland and it turned out had no politics so we fear doing that again.” Ouch!

As for Carns himself, the picture is fuller than either camp quite captures. Royal Marine at 19, an officer by 22, mentioned in despatches at 27, special forces, brigadier-in-waiting. “I became a Marine because I wanted to expand my horizons, get out of Aberdeen and serve,” he told the Times last year. “I became an officer because I believed I could deliver change, then I left the military because I believe I can deliver change faster via the ballot box rather than the bullet.”

What lies beneath
The change he has in mind, pieced together from resignation statements and interviews, is a politics of resilience and seriousness, one that treats the first duty of government as keeping people safe and reads safety as more than tanks and troops. We grant defence the long view but patch everything else year to year, so the costs of failure rise and rise. Mental ill health costs England £300bn a year. A government review puts the annual cost of almost a million young people outside work, education or training at £125bn. Reoffending costs billions more, and a prison place now carries a cost close to £60,000 a year. We are paying for failure, he says, at the most expensive end. The tone is Carns to the core. “I want to take this country by the scruff of its neck and make it great again.”

The roots of that politics are not hard to find. He was raised by his single mum in a working-class corner of Aberdeen, one of five children, the family moving to Heathryfold when his parents separated. At sixteen, a barbecue accident burned eleven per cent of his body, the defining trauma of his youth. Then came a car crash, a titanium pin in his leg, a failed Marine medical because of his colour vision, and rejection by the Paras because of the pin. So he went back and joined from the bottom. “After that, I doubled down on never failing,” he told the Independent.

His old history teacher, the one who came to sit by his burns ward bed when many others had drifted away, has a simple verdict. Humanity, humility and humour, the three Hums: that was the boy he taught. Two decades on, with the medals to go with the scars, Labour has to decide whether those qualities are enough to carry a party, and whether the boy who ran four miles to school every morning is ready to ask the same discipline of everyone else.

On the day of the Makerfield by-election, with Labour’s future in question, one thing is clear to me. Al Carns is a wholly unusual Labour MP. His talents, experience and character cannot be allowed to drift on to the back benches. It will paralyse him. Whatever he does next, and right now the leadership looks a steeper summit than Everest, the party needs him in a serious role. MPs may decide he is too untested for the top job. That is a fair caution. But in a party with no shortage of doubts, Carns is forcing the hardest questions into the open: what Labour is for, how it protects people and whether it can still speak with moral force. I admire him for that.