I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard two things in recent months. Serving and retired military commanders, ministers and former ministers, strategists, advisers and MPs parrot the line that the defence of the country is the first duty of any government. They also complained that John Healey was too polite, too much of a Labour man to march over the road and demand the money that is needed.
This was only half right. The Defence Secretary has resigned with a devastating parting shot at Keir Starmer after the Prime Minister failed even to secure a derisory sum of money that he had demanded from the Treasury and the cabinet. In his resignation letter, Healey says ‘you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats’.
Healey says he saw the settlement for the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) only on Monday and regards it as wholly inadequate. ‘Your DIP financial settlement … falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time.’ Given the psychodrama and personal insults which usually govern cabinet resignations, this is absolutely devastating – the most consequential issue on which anyone has resigned for years; far more so than when Michael Heseltine quit Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet over the Westland affair.
