UK Minister for Defence Secretary John Healey has resigned.
Healey's resignation letter includes:
You [Starmer] spelled out the threats last week: "It is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030."
Nobody ever seems to explain why Russia would attack a NATO country to invoke article 5 against it.
The reasons are likely to be:
- Russia is fed up with NATO countries funding the proxy war in Ukraine and supplying weapons to kill Russian people.
- The USA stations even more nuclear weapons on its borders e.g. in the Baltic States
- NATO/the EU continue to interfere in the elections of states that don't border the EU but do border Russia.
- Russia has the backing of China and India to start a world-war against US hegemony.
Why Russia would want to attack NATO when, according to the western MSM, the country is already on its knees from sanctions and the Ukraine war and begging for peace is a complete mystery.
MI6 seems to be promoting one narrative in the media and another behind closed doors.
The Russian 'threat' to the UK is simply a way to justify re-arming and spending more on defence rather than fixing some rather more important domestic problems for the British people. But dealing with immigration and the NHS is nowhere near as sexy as photo-ops with the troops.
Healey and everyone else knows this but on-one will admit it.
Since then, the demands on defence have increased still further, as have the UK commitments you have rightly made to allies. Conflict in the Middle East, with the UK now leading the multinational Strait of Hormuz military mission; High North security, with the UK now leading NATO's Arctic Sentry mission; increased Russian activity towards the UK and NATO nations and increased attacks in Ukraine, with the Paris agreement confirming a British deployment to Ukraine after a ceasefire.
Why is the UK doing all this out-of-theatre stuff when it can't afford it and doesn't have the military to support it?
The army is under-strength and can't recruit; the navy has too many vessels in dock being repaired and the RAF has not been completely re-aligned around space and drone warfare (the so-called 'kill-web').
Money alone is not going to solve these problems - even £13 billion.
It needs a government with vision and that is not this government.