𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Presumably they shall spend their time staring across the table at each other, in a Mexican stand off of misery, as they each wonder who leaves next.

Earlier it was the turn of the Minister of Defence. John Healey cleared out and told the Prime Minister in plain terms that he had made the country less safe.

Within hours, Al Carns, the armed forces minister and a decorated serviceman, followed him out, declaring the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan to be “not built for the threat we face”.

What they warn of is not news – that Britain underfunds its forces has been said, wearily and repeatedly, for months.

The HMS Dragon debacle, when the Royal Navy could barely scrape together a single ship to send to the Mediterranean, told the same story.

But the difference is that the warning now comes from inside the building, in the handwriting of the men charged with our safety.

One horrendous detail lingers and that’s that it took Sir Keir four hours to acknowledge the resignation of his own Defence Secretary, at a time when conflict blazes across half the globe.

Four hours! One prays our adversaries were not watching the clock.

There is a constitutional question here also, simmering beneath the drama.

If we have a Prime Minister who cannot fill the holes being blasted into the good ship Government, then we have a Prime Minister who does not, in any meaningful sense, command the House.

Kemi Badenoch says Labour has put welfare before warfare, and on the evidence she is right. The world is dangerous, and we are not ready for it.

Sir Keir must wake up and grip this.

Or he might simply go, and turn off the lights on his way out.