The United Kingdom’s long-delayed Defence Investment Plan has yet to be published, but it has already claimed a very serious casualty. John Healey today resigned from his role as the UK Secretary of Defence in protest over shortfalls in funding outlined in the military spending plan.
“After explaining to you that I would not be able to accept a DIP settlement that does not give our Forces the resources they need, I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation as your Defence Secretary,” he said in a letter to the Prime Minister Keir Starmer, published in full here.
We have reached out to the Ministry of Defence for response, including any details about who is due to take over the ministry. It declined to comment, pointing us to the resignation letter.
The development is a major blow to the current Labour government at a time when it is already under pressure. In May, Labour saw catastrophic losses in national local elections, a shift that was seen by many as a referendum on Starmer and his party.
Healey had been a long-serving member of this government, taking on the role in July 2024, immediately after Labour won the general election and Starmer became Prime Minister.
The DIP has been caught up in a lot of delays, mainly due to budget issues. In short, experts had estimated that at least £28 billion would be allocated in the DIP to re-arm and update the UK’s forces in the current geopolitical climate. Although the plan has yet to be officially released, multiple reports are pegging the actual figures at potentially less than half that amount. If accurate, it would mean that the UK “will lose our relevance on the international stage,” said Samuel Burrell, a partner at Expeditions, in a note to Resilience Media.
There are also significant disagreements over how funding should be invested, and — because of wider budgetary problems in the UK — what other services would need to be cut to finance defence. This has led to inevitable finger pointing and partisan politics.
As a result, the Defence Investment Plan has become a totem for everything that does and does not work within not just defence but all public spending in Britain.
Healey’s actions reportedly came after he — still in the role of Defence Secretary — was finally given a copy of the plan, only on Monday of this week. Howard Mustoe noted in his Rearmament that the plan was to rush-release the DIP more publicly on Friday (tomorrow) — a veritable graveyard shift to bury the news, as it were, since Parliament does not sit on Fridays so there would be no debate at launch.
Healey’s letter and resignation thus are nothing short of a direct and scathing move to pre-empt that.
Healey notes that one of the frustrations has been that the government has not explored ways of making up the budget shortfall that was clearly going to be present. This is something that was also highlighted in the Strategic Defence Review, a document published last year that was created to take an assessment of the MoD to determine the best way forward. One of the authors of that review, Sir Richard Barrons, also focused on financing in his comments on the current situation.
“The UK public sector spends around £1.3 trillion a year. Finding additional funding for defence is therefore a matter of priority, not impossibility,” he said in a note to Resilience Media. “If Government struggles to move money quickly within the public sector, it should also look beyond traditional funding routes. The City of London is sitting on billions of pounds of potential investment. Government should be having a serious conversation with private finance about how to support defence transformation, industrial capacity and national resilience. The conclusion is clear: the UK needs to be more imaginative, more urgent and more honest about how it funds defence.”
None of this was in a vacuum: today’s drama comes after months of people in the defence industry and government lamenting the stasis that has overtaken a lot of defence activity in the country, despite the steady trickle of news of smaller contracts and deals.
More from the letter:
“This new era for defence required further investment through the Defence Investment Plan. The excellent and extensive cross-government work that completed in January-overseen by you, me and the Chancellor – confirmed the scale of the challenge and the rising demands on defence.
“Since then, you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.
“As I’ve outlined to you, there are credible ways of meeting the mid-term funding challenges, working multi-nationally and as other European nations are doing, to allow us to protect our ability to deliver the missions of our Labour Government.
“You know what defence needs. You made the argument for this powerfully in your speech at the Munich Security Conference back in February. Without a DIP (Defence Investment Plan) 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.”
The Defence Investment Plan is the government’s outline for tying defence directly to the economy. It follows the Strategic Defence Review, which itself was delayed prior to its publication in 2025. In theory, the SRD and the DIP should combine to form a blueprint for the MoD to use as it rearms itself in the face of war with Russia and other geopolitical challenges in the Middle East and elsewhere. At this rate, it looks unlikely to be able to do that.
More to come. Refresh for updates.
