UK Defence Secretary John Healey resigns over defence funding row
With the full caveat that I have never managed a govt dept, as Wes Streeting knows very well having been health secretary, investment in active travel *pays for itself many times over* in better public health outcomes etc. Cutting investment is often a false economy, as the UK knows to its cost.
Richard Bowes 🇵🇸63Russia may or may not invade and spending £30bn may or may not prevent that. What Russia *is* doing right now is weaponising twitter against us. Coming off twitter costs the government £0bn. They won't even do that.
Eccentrist Dad32And if - wearing an admittedly Green hat here - you frame defence as security, to include climate action, building our resilience to disruptive events, reducing foreign energy dependency: supporting walking and cycling improves it all.
Engineer Like A Girl21It's not even £4.5billion of new money!
Claire S (UK not USA)11Streeting never comes across as very bright.
Gary O'Keefe10Why whinge about spending that directly improves the well-being of the public? If I were looking to re-direct some wasted money, it'd be the Lower Thames Crossing. £11bn in public funds that will only encourage more traffic and cause more pollution.
Harry9He cut off trans healthcare on evidence free bigotry, it should not surprise anyone the rest of his views are evidence free bollocks.
Brendan Macken8He has to be the dumbest and most ill-equipped health minister we've had since the last one. He's a snivelling little toad who was in the pay of private healthcare and posting such ignorant and inflammatory comments on X really shows his class.
Perry Byrne6Even if you ignore the health outcomes, around £140k per UK school to make our communities more appealing to walk or cycle in seems remarkably good value (assuming that's what we actually get).
Clive Durdle6Reading the details of this as it is primarily a health intervention someone from the health department must have agreed with it www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Gareth Oakland 🇫🇷🏏🏉6If this idiot ever leads Labour, even more people will be deserting to the Greens.
Gareth Oakland 🇫🇷🏏🏉6Also it is absolutely not new money anyway.
Radiohead319 💙6Correction: growth is the "number one priority" PROVIDED it is not achieved through EU membership.
Canaries Caption It4Streeting has leadership pangs that must be fed.
FrequentFlats4And we mustn't forget that successfully escaping a russian who wishes to push you from a high window might depend on cardiovascular fitness.
il Cane Saggio3Since he was Health Secretary until a couple of months ago it was probably him or one of his team who bid for this money.
Steve Peers2Are we even discussing the same amounts? Possibly comparing annual budget increases to multi annual increases? @jdportes.bsky.social
Tim Hurrell2Now he's resigned, perhaps it's time he did a bit more walking and cycling.
Steve Hardcastle2What a slimy little toad Streeting turned out to be .
#c0ffee 🇺🇦🏳️⚧️2Wes Streeting has made the choice to remain on Xitter, and I judge him poorly for it.
UK Defence Secretary John Healey has quit over the government’s military spending plans.
Mark Chadbourn97Al Carns has quit as UK Armed Forces minister.
Rob Jacobs16That is the end of this Gov. I can't see how they can come back from this. They either fund their own Defence Review or don't and, frankly, not funding their own DR is a failure to govern. Well done to Healey for showing some backbone.
Samoht6or perhaps more specifically, over the government's lack of a plan to spend sufficient money on the military.
Churchwater5Great pity. I liked him privately and don’t think he was doing a bad job. Let’s see what he does next. Maybe some time out and a new portfolio later. He’s a good man.
David F.4As if Starmer didn't have enough problems already. And this one is entirely his own fault.
John Healey is an utterly decent man. Under his leadership of the MOD I saw real mettle on the issue of VAWG in armed forces and also his handling of the murder of Agnes Wanjiru was so far away from what their family had become accustomed to. A great man. www.gov.uk/government/n...
Jess Phillips91Also just to say his wife is literally one of my favourite people in the world. Just thoroughly decent people the pair of them.
Ian Pearce 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 💙5Wes Streeting is not the answer, Jess. The UK faces challenges in every government department. It’s a shame that some couldn’t stay the course and put their own political ambitions to one side.
Ruth3So what should we cut Jess? Funding for violence against women, NHS budgets, education, social care ??? Welfare????? Or should we increase taxes ?? On who, how ?? Your comment is hyperbole without a plan to fix the situation..
Tracey2He did a good job, just walked away from it too soon & left it to someone else to sort out.
Sadie Trent2You‘ll probably understand this coming from me, but his work on Ukraine especially hit me right in the feels. Some of my friends in Kyiv had met and said he was the best we’d had. A few of them said we need to go further on defence spending with impending threats
John Healey resigned as Defence Minister today because Defence 'isn't getting enough money'. Healey took £52,940.30 from Labour Together. Labour Together is stuffed with millionaire and billionaire donors with extensive links to the Defence industry. That's why he is mad.
BladeoftheSun25They are all corrupt, ridiculously corrupt, so corrupt that they think it is normal. All they care about is keeping their donors happy, they dictate everything they say and everything they do.
Noodling3Unfortunately it is possible to be both correct and corrupt. Healey is an arse, but there are questions to be asked about the UK's defence budgets in these troubled times.
Stephen J.Reid3Let the billionaires stump up the money.
The many takes flying around about John Healey and national security spending miss a fundamental point. In Finland, where people have a strong social safety net and a real sense of shared national purpose, around 80% say they would be prepared to defend their country. In the UK, it's closer to 30%.
Clive Lewis MP21That should tell us something. Until we change the financial architecture of our economy and bring the essentials of life out of the grip of corporate extraction and into public ownership, we will always be told to choose between bombs and butter. But the reality is we need both.
MilenaZP🧑🦽🏴🇮🇹🇪🇺6We are in a Brexit economy with Starmer & Co sticking like glue to red lines. It will always be those with less facing more cuts even with Labour. Look at what you did with newly disabled people. They get less now on UC health element.
James 🏳️🌈3Well said. National security is about more than tanks and drones - it’s about protecting us from those that would love the UK to burn even more than it already is. bylinetimes.com/2026/06/10/r...
John Flanagan2I wholeheartedly agree with you re. citizens needing to have a stake in order to feel that the country is worth fighting for. That aside, Finland is a bit of a wild comparator - our histories are hugely dissimilar.
John Healey is right. The UK is spending too little & failing to learn from Ukraine’s experience of modern war. And the Treasury shows no sign of interest in whether the UK can defend itself or not. A PM's priority should be to ensure the country's national security.
Working Mans Economics4What if we increased defence spending to 5%, but spent the money on the same overpriced, decades late, not fit for purpose crap we spend the current 2% on. Would that be ok?
Simon Pease3Having been through responses to your post I have an announcement to make. I block stupid.
European Angie, Earth Carer3Healy is right. You gets what you pays for! The US decided to cut back drastically on education and increase drastically on military spending. The result, idiots emptying the stock pile of Patriots by 600% !
I see that *not* giving the military 28 billion pounds out of the welfare budget is “a political decision”, presumably in a way that giving the military 28 billion pounds out of the welfare budget wouldn’t be political at all. The latter is, I assume, more of a natural occurrence, like a sunrise.
Operation Eric Furry4818 billion is "a few extra billion". 22 billion is "a financial black hole". It's not the inconsistency that kills you, it's the contempt.
flyingrodent24It really is not going to take much for all of these clowns to decide that actually what Britain needs is A Man Of Will with the determination to Do What Must Be Done (scything the welfare budget and giving that money to Lockheed Martin instead, for missiles and so on).
Oscar Zeta Gundam7"his best speech" is a strange way of describing what turns out to be better described as "told the rubes a bunch of bullshit"
SMD6ah now it's a few extra billion just lying around, no big deal
In a shock move, the UK Defence Secretary has resigned. John Healey accused Sir Keir Starmer of not giving enough to defence spending despite a Defence Review emphasising an urgent need to strengthen. It's not so important for Ukraine - every minister will support Ukraine.
Tim White61At least 12 people were injured in a Russian drone attack in Pavlohrad. The Shahed flew straight into a 5-storey apartment block in the city in Dnipropetrovsk region.
clockworkChris2Yes, it’s true that ‘every minister will support Ukraine’. In true alarmist style The Telegraph’s ‘Cables’ email runs with the subject line ‘Ukraine just lost a critical ally’ 🫠 Must unsubscribe.
In case you missed our live @therestpolitics.bsky.social on John Healey resignation yesterday here it is. Since then Al Carns resignation letter if anything even more brutal. Tough times for Keir Starmer podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
Carol Hedges8Well thanknyou Labour scum for pushing the whole country closer to a Farage dominated govt. So fed up with this! Fuck the lot of them. Traitors without and traitors within.
Claire S (UK not USA)8Seems to me Carns who had written a very reasonable letter in response to Healy's resignation was in a huff because he wasn't offered the top job.
ruralriding.bsky.social6Sure are. Nothing like a toys out the pram moment. Healey has served himself. Nothing more nothing less. Veer left to oblivion.
eborian.bsky.social5Interesting to see retired General Sir Richard Barrons (BBC news website) calling for the triple lock to be scrapped to pay for defence. Not a big deal to a retired general on a pension of over £100,000 pa but to someone living on state pension alone the difference would be considerable.
Lucy2I hope in this one you don't casually suggest we as a country should commit warcrimes against another country because we don't particularly like each other anyway, so that somehow makes it fine.
humiandyou.bsky.social2"The dog barks and the caravan moves on...." Dan Jarvis is an absolute shoe-in and excellent choice for the Secretary of State for Defence role. Fortunately several others from the department have also left - a clean sweep allowing him to gather his own people around him. Win, win situation surely?
This really is not an ideal time for the UK not to have a defence secretary, and a PM which is facing a leadership contest.
La Reine des Metaphores4He shouldn't be facing a leadership contest. What we are seeing is Labour factionalism in action and this is the fallout. However, the MOD does have a habit of going through money like water.....
WindsLightToVariable21) The real problem in the #UK is National Debt. Successive PM's of all colours have not had the guts to: - Tell the populace that there is not enough Revenue available to do everything. - say GDP has been badly affected by #Brexit - Cuts will have to happen to pay for defence.