00:00The point of this resignation is it's a principle, it's the issue of defence spending.
00:07So it's nothing to do with leadership challenges, it's nothing per se to do with Keir Starmer.
00:11In fact, John Healy has expressed his full support for the Labour government.
00:14What this is, is a clear red flag.
00:17We've got a problem here in that we're not committing to spending enough money on defence.
00:23And I think Healy is very angry that the Prime Minister would not stand up to the Treasury,
00:28support him to increase the amount of spending that he wanted for defence,
00:33that he believed had been committed for defence.
00:36I mean, to lose one Cabinet Minister is unfortunate,
00:38but for the Prime Minister to lose six in a month looks like carelessness.
00:44I think he's lost 19 since the election.
00:47I mean, has Starmer lost control of the government?
00:51I think part of the problem here, it's actually worse than this,
00:54in that did he actually have control to begin with,
00:57but the extent to which the media has been over-hyping any sort of issue.
01:02So there's actually a huge list of successes that the government have had
01:06that have not been publicised in the media.
01:08But they make one mistake, there's one problem, one neutered,
01:11and that becomes headline news and is amplified and amplified again in social media.
01:16So his problem is, he can't get hold of the narrative,
01:19he can't get hold of the story,
01:20and I don't think any politician really can these days,
01:23because social media and the media more broadly
01:26just can whip all sorts of things out from all sorts of unexpected areas.
01:31Healy's comments on inadequate defence spending
01:34will presumably be welcome news for NATO's adversaries
01:39and Britain's adversaries all around the world.
01:42Absolutely the case.
01:44I mean, what is interesting is that the amount of increase in spending
01:47is over £13.5 billion,
01:50but it's still falling well short of getting the,
01:53as a percentage of GDP, up to 3%,
01:56and even 3.5% by 2035.
01:59And Healy's argument was that they're moving too slowly to get that.
02:04So his hope was that they would get spending up to about 3% of GDP by 2030.
02:08The Treasury is talking about 2.68% by 2030.
02:14So Healy's worried that if they don't make the 2030,
02:16they've got no chance whatsoever of making 2035,
02:19hence his resignation.
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