UK Defence Minister John Healey quits over defence spending in scathing letter to PM Keir Starmer

John Healey has dramatically and suddenly resigned as the UK’s Defence Secretary, saying British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s military spending plans would leave the country less safe.

In an eviscerating letter released just hours before he was due to appear before the press at His Majesty’s Naval Base in Portsmouth alongside Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles, Mr Healey said Sir Keir was not planning to raise defence spending enough.

“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,” Mr Healey said.

He said the UK Prime Minister’s proposed plan, that he was given on Monday, only planned to raise defence spending to a level that “falls well short of what is required for defence and for the country at this dangerous time.”

He noted that Russia could attack NATO by 2030.

Mr Healey had said the UK should be setting defence spending at 3 per cent of GDP but that the Prime Minister’s funding constituted an increase of just 0.8 per cent, one that would force him to make decision that would “leave the country less safe.”

“The extra support is backloaded when the pressure of operations and imperative to speed up readiness to fight is in the first two years and it rises to just 2.68 per cent of GDP in 2030, when we will reach 2.6 per cent next year with the investment we are already making,” Mr Healey said.

“You spelled out the threats last week: ‘it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030’.

“You know what defence needs. You made the argument for this powerfully in your speech at the Munich Security Conference back in February.

“I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation as your Defence Secretary.”

Mr Healey gave no indication of his looming resignation when he appeared at what would be his last public appearance as UK Defence Secretary at Lancaster House on Wednesday afternoon, alongside his Australian counterpart Mr Marles as well as UK’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Australia’s Penny Wong.

His departure has heaped even more pressure on Sir Keir’s embattled leadership.

Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir’s premiership was unravelling.

“His health secretary resigned two weeks ago. His defence secretary has resigned at a critical time when we are facing global threats, and he is doing so because the Prime Minister is trying to please his backbenchers by putting money into welfare instead of defence,” she said.

“We need to start funding defence. We need to get to 3 per cent of GDP by the end of this parliament.

“I don’t see how he can stay in this job. He can’t run the country. He is paralysed because his backbenchers only want to spend money on welfare.”

Sir Keir is likely to face a leadership challenge if the popular Labour Mayor Andy Burnham wins a by-election next week.

Former Cabinet minister Wes Streeting resigned as health secretary ahead of any leadership contest.

Mr Healey could also be a candidate.

The battle over the UK’s defence spending had been building ahead of next month’s NATO summit in Turkiye in July.

US President Donald Trump forced European nations to commit to 3.5 per cent spending by 2035. Many countries have raced ahead and begun lifting their spending already.

But the UK has slipped to 12th place on the NATO league tables since Labour’s rise to power.

The Chair of the UK’s Defence Committee, Labour MP Dan Thesi, told the Latika Takes podcast that the UK urgently needed to lift defence spending including to make good on commitments like building the SNN-AUKUS submarines intended for Australia.

“What the likes of me want is we want to meet the moment, given the highly volatile situation that we find ourselves in terms of geopolitics, we need to make sure that we are meeting not just 2.5 per cent as the Government has done for next year in terms of the target, but in order to meet the 3.5 per cent NATO target on conventional defence spending by 2035, we feel that by the end of this parliament we need to get to 3 per cent,” he said.

“The government hasn’t committed to it thus far.

“We need to do more … we need to firm up those defence expenditure levels in order to keep ourselves safe and also to ensure that we are meeting NATO targets going to the future.

“And also to send a clear demand signal to our allies and adversaries that we are serious about defence because if we don’t invest now we’ll be sorry in the years to come.”

Ed Arnold from the military think tank RUSI, said Mr Healey’s resignation was a “seismic moment for the Government and the Ministry of Defence (MoD).”

“The resignation will ensure that this government – and subsequent ones – will find it harder to be complacent on defence spending and will give it the increased public attention it rightly deserves, far more so than any speech can, no matter how well it is delivered.

“While the impact will mainly be felt in Whitehall, the international implications are severe with a NATO Summit just three weeks away,” Mr Arnold said.

“For the MoD, it is a very rare case of a senior minister taking a principled stand against the hollowing out of the UK armed forces, rather than complaining about it with hindsight when out of office.”