UK Defence Crisis: Healey's Resignation Exposes Funding Gap
UK Defence Secretary John Healey resigned on Thursday, citing an insufficient funding offer of £2bn from PM Keir Starmer, which he said falls short of meeting NATO commitments and leaves Britain without a clear defence strategy ahead of a summit.
John Healey stepped down as UK Defence Secretary on Thursday, triggering a political crisis just weeks before a NATO summit and amid US threats to resume bombing Iran. In his resignation letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Healey stated that the offered financial settlement for the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was "well short of what is required for defence and the country."
According to the source, Starmer proposed an additional £2 billion (0.08% of GDP) for defence by 2030, far less than the sums needed to meet the NATO target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035—a commitment Starmer made a year earlier. Healey argued that the offer breached that pledge and left no time to achieve the goal.
The Ministry of Defence has struggled with a funding "black hole" that originally stood at £28 billion, later reduced to £18 billion, of which the Treasury was willing to cover only £13.5 billion. Healey accused Starmer of sitting on the problem for months before making a "derisory" offer.
The resignation has raised doubts about Britain's reliability in key international programmes, including the Aukus nuclear submarine project with Australia and the US, and the Global Combat Air Programme (GCap) with Japan and Italy. An Australian media event at Portsmouth naval base to discuss Aukus was cancelled after Healey's resignation.
John Foreman, a former UK defence attaché to Moscow, called the timing "as bad as it could be," noting that Starmer now faces a NATO summit in early July with no settled defence strategy. Additionally, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is due to visit the UK on Sunday, and Starmer will need to reassure Tokyo that Britain remains a committed partner. The crisis has been brewing for years, with the MoD failing to produce a properly costed equipment plan since 2022.
