Healey won’t be the last Defence Secretary to resign

As he pushed for a small increase in defence spending in that year’s budget, there was speculation that Number 11’s reluctance to invest in Britain’s Armed Forces would ultimately force his resignation.

Now it is John Healey - widely regarded as one of the Prime Minister’s most loyal allies - who has reached his tether. In his resignation letter, Healey wrote that the Prime Minister has 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.”

His frustration is completely justified. The Treasury has been seeking to water down the UK’s commitment to NATO’s spending target. Healey revealed in his letter that defence is set to receive a pitiful 0.08% increase in GDP spending by 2030.

Inflation is still eating away at the UK’s commitment to the promises set out in last year’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR), and the longer the Defence Investment Plan is delayed - as it inevitably will be again due to the resignation - the worse our position becomes.

The reality is that the SDR, despite the critical importance of its recommendations, would never trump the Treasury’s reluctance to spend on defence, even as other areas of government spending balloon. This was not lost on the authors of the SDR, who wrote in their foreword to the review: “We were asked to conduct our Review within the budgetary context of a transition to 2.5% of GDP.”

In effect, the Treasury constrained the Ministry of Defence at precisely the moment it needed strengthening, and its hands remain tied. Such a posture from Number 11 sits in direct conflict with the UK’s aspirations for AUKUS and GCAP, as well as the goal of fielding the mass, capability, and technological edge needed to deter Russia in Europe.

The consequences of the Treasury’s aversion to defence spending have become clear. The UK now ranks 31st out of 32 NATO allies in rearmament efforts. Only Iceland, which was a founding member of NATO primarily because of its geographic location as the gateway between the High North and the Atlantic, falls below Britain.

Britain will soon arrive at the NATO Summit in Turkey with its credibility in tatters and its options constrained, facing allies who are likely, at best, to be disappointed and, at worst, furious. One can only imagine how this is viewed by our partners in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), many of whom, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark and Sweden, have been at the forefront of Europe’s defence spending resurgence. Britain is becoming the JEF’s sick man, rather than its leader.

Unless the Treasury opens its eyes, sees the dangers ahead, and makes a fundamental shift in its spending priorities, Healey will not be the last senior minister to resign over the persistent underfunding of Britain’s defence.

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Thomas Nurcombe is Research Manager at the Coalition for Global Prosperity.

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