{"id":19979,"date":"2026-06-11T19:21:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/uk-defence-minister-john-healey-quits-says-pm-starmers-plans-fail-to-defend-country\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T19:21:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:51:58","slug":"uk-defence-minister-john-healey-quits-says-pm-starmers-plans-fail-to-defend-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/uk-defence-minister-john-healey-quits-says-pm-starmers-plans-fail-to-defend-country\/","title":{"rendered":"UK defence minister John Healey quits, says PM Starmer&#8217;s plans fail to &#8216;defend&#8217; country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-131661230,imgsize-67342,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/photo-credit-ap.jpg\" alt=\"UK defence minister John Healey quits, says PM Starmer's plans fail to 'defend' country\" title=\"Photo credit: AP\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Defence secretary of the United Kingdom, John Healey, resigned from his position on Thursday, citing the government\u2019s unwillingness to increase defence spending at a time of rising threats.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"2\"\/>In his letter to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, Healey expressed that the prime minister has been \u201cunable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"5\"\/>According to Healey, it was the PM who recently informed of the intelligence assessment regarding Russia\u2019s potential attack on Nato by 2030. Yet, the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) wasn\u2019t up to the standard to counter the threat.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"9\"\/>\u201cWithout a DIP that meets the moment in this way, I am 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\u201d, he wrote.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"11\"\/>Keir has pledged to boost UK defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027 and 3% by 2034, but it isn\u2019t being seen as fast enough.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"13\"\/>The letter mentioned that the UK\u2019s demands on defence have increased significantly. It now leads the multinational Strait of Hormuz military mission in the Middle East, and Nato\u2019s Sentry mission in the Arctic. With Russia\u2019s increased<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"15\"\/>Increased attacks in Ukraine have brought the trilateral \u2018Paris agreement\u2019 of January 6 back into focus, under which Britain has to deploy troops in Ukraine, once a peace deal with Russia is achieved.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"18\"\/>Healey had been the defence secretary ever since the Keir led Labour Party, came to power in 2024. He has the impression of being a capable minister.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"20\"\/>Appreciating the PM\u2019s efforts, he mentioned how his tenure brought the biggest defence reforms in 50 years, raised the defence investments to 2.5% of GDP, three years before expectations, signed major defence agreements with Germany, Norway and France, and won the biggest UK defence export deals for decades.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"22\"\/>According to AP, the resignation is another blow to the British prime minister, who is already facing resignation demands from Labour colleagues.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"24\"\/>Despite his resignation, Healey has ensured \u201cfull support\u201d to the Labour Government.<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/uk\/uk-defence-minister-john-healey-quits-says-pm-starmers-plans-fail-to-defend-country\/articleshow\/131661107.cms\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defence secretary of the United Kingdom, John Healey, resigned from his position on Thursday, citing the government\u2019s unwillingness to increase defence spending at a time of rising threats.In his letter to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, Healey expressed that the prime minister has been \u201cunable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-latest-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}