𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

John Healey, the former Defence Secretary, acted honourably and in the national interest. In resigning, he has shown that I was on the money when I said at Prime Minister’s Questions this week that Keir Starmer was putting British troops and Britain’s national security at risk.

I told the Prime Minister that the money he was planning to give for defence was less than half the minimum that the armed forces required. Starmer insisted that wasn’t the case. Now the PM’s Defence Secretary has resigned because he agrees with me.

John Healey’s resignation letter was astonishing. He told the Prime Minister: “You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit to the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.”

Again, this is exactly what I said to Keir Starmer on Wednesday.

Healey goes on to say that he is “being forced to make decisions that would reduce the readiness of our forces and increase the risk to personnel on operations, and could make the country less safe.”

Britain should not be in this position, but this is where Keir Starmer has taken us.

The truth is the Labour government are not funding defence, because they want to spend the country’s money on more welfare.

They are taxing all of us to pay for more benefits and it cannot go on. Labour MPs and the remainder of the cabinet need to take a long, hard look at what they are doing to our armed forces and to our country.

The Conservative Party knows that we need to get defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030.

We are going to reinstate the two-child benefit cap, because we believe that families on benefits should have to take the same difficult decisions as those who aren’t. And we would put the money saved from reinstating the cap into increasing our armed forces.

We are also going to put a stop to Ed Miliband’s net zero projects and put that money into a Sovereign Defence Fund that could raise up to £50 billion for British defence.

We have a plan. Reform don’t even have a Defence spokesman. Keir Starmer is just trying to save his own job.

John Healey has done the honourable thing. This would have been very tough for him, and he would not have taken this decision lightly.

But the simple fact is that the world is becoming more dangerous, yet we are getting weaker, because the Labour government has chosen welfare over defence of the country.

A Conservative government led by me will always put out national security first.