Shadow defence secretary’s experience in Blair-Brown governments and Miliband, Corbyn and Starmer shadow cabinets is a boon to a party where few have governed before
Within his first few days as a junior education minister in Tony Blair’s government, officials reassured John Healey that a New Labour scheme to fund adult education through “individual learning accounts” was a “roar-away success”.
“Don’t worry about them – in fact, you know, we’ve exceeded our targets by about five or six times already,” he recalls a civil servant reporting to him. Within two months, it was evident the taxpayer was being defrauded of tens of millions of pounds.
