Defence Secretary John Healey resigns and calls out Rachel Reeves

[Fillies4DeclanRice]

John Healey has become the latest government minister to resign, basically saying he cannot do the job of keeping the UK safe because Labour's economic model is in such a mess.

His resignation letter effectively says the government needs to spend far less on welfare benefits and net zero, and start taxing less and spending more on defence.

This is total chaos now.

We need to clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion, tax wealth, and luxury consumer spending.

True. I think it’s forgotten that pensioners pay tax like everyone else. Not NI I appreciate. The UKs state pension amount does not compare favourably with many other countries.

Why does everyone seem to think it’s money for defence or benefits?

There must be other things that can be cut or balanced to offset defence spending? Perhaps look at foreign policy so we are less at risk from any threats too?

All seems a bit strange.

Look at the person he had to put into Streeting's vacated health seat...total nobody! It'll be very interesting to see who he plucks from obscurity for defence!

Agree

Luxury consumer spending….

Brilliant.

State pension has been classed as a benefit for some time. I don’t agree with it being called that, but unfortunately that is the case

Mor tax from the super wealthy

Thanks Ed!

If they means tested on income ( say £35k as in limit to qualify for WFA) but excluded savings it would be fairer. Pensioners shouldn’t have to rely on savings being eaten away for costs of daily living

The trouble is, what the country really needs right now, are right wing policies

😂😂😂

It's almost as if 2010-2024 never happened and right-wing clowns like Truss, Johnson, Kwarteng, Jenrick, Braverman, Patel, etc, etc, all appeared out of the ether in the last 18 months and have nothing whatsoever to do with the utter binfire that the UK became under their governance.

Oh wait, that's precisely the picture the Tory arseholes who have since bailed to Reform are attempting to paint. The fact the blatant gaslighting is being swallowed hook, line, and sinker by so many of the UK public tells you all you need to know about your average UK voter.

That’s because workers and employers pay more into their pensions in other countries. They are structured differently.

Well the technical detail is on paper we have some decent kit.

In reality most of it is broken/not working.

So :

Astute class subs, mostly laid up because they can't get the docks to repair them IIRC.
Type 45 destroyers, a lot of these are in refit, and we had to scramble to get just one out to Cyprus recently.
Aircraft carriers, keep breaking down.
New stuff like APCs are in a hell of a state and might injure people who are riding in them (yet to be established).
F35s are great, but hugely expensive and we don't have that many of them.

So something is going horribly wrong here.

I think part of the problem is that the UK has a "we should have the best of everything" which is an issue I have seen in other areas I work in. If you do go for the best of everything it is very expensive to maintain, and you can't have much of it.

The philosophy is (slowly) starting to change, to have a combination of some really good stuff which is generally rarely needed and some lower performance stuff which suffices for a lot of the work that is done.

But more money does have to be spent. And it has to come from somewhere. And it can't be borrowed. So either tax. Or some other area has to be cut.

Always worth remembering that half the welfare bill is actually pensions and everyone has moaned like mad about raising the pension age, people working longer.

I'm afraid the truth is everyone wants more or better things and not pay more tax. Yet we actually pay less tax than most of our European neighbours and considerably less than some of them.

The Scandinavian countries are regularly hailed as having higher standards of living and better services, roads, healthcare but they have considerably higher taxes.

Before anyone adds in the bill for illegal immigration, that is an absolutely tiny amount that would make next to no difference.

If we want more defence spending then we all have to agree to pay more. It's the only way.

That’s all? Many get less and are living on that amount!

Left wing isn’t going to do it but perhaps we’ll find out how far they try.

I agree. We do need to spend more on defence and less on welfare. But everyone wants welfare cuts for other people. A large part of Starmers problems have been caused because he has been weak with his backbenchers, many of whom don't care if we don't spend on defence and would rather we didn't have a defence budget at all, but will kick off over any suggestions of getting the welfare bill under control. They are also the type of people who have been moaning about US involvement in our defence, but now they are not to be trusted and don't want to bankroll us we have to pay for it ourselves. We can't choose not to spend it at all.

Haven't you noticed - they have left / are leaving / will leave the country?
Will the last one please turn off the lights?

Well maybe there should be conversations around that but when many employers pay wages so low that the state has to subsidise them through in work benefits, I can’t see emoloyers paying more. I do think there is a case to review the public sector pensions and how much is contributed to by the taxpayer.

My worry is that even if they did raise more from taxation, slashing the benefits bill etc. they are so incompetent they still wouldnt spend any more on defence.

Yes it's cyber security, intelligence, drone operations etc. Those are things that we need and as an added bonus would provide solid infrastructure, industry and high quality jobs and skills for our young people so provide a return on investment. ( Same goes for investing in our own energy, renewables, nuclear etc which is also part of our defence and security) I had hoped Labour would invest in long term infrastructure projects that would pay dividends long term but they have been crippled by indecision and too many new MPs who are unwieldy and don't want to run the country.

Rachel Reeves needs to go, she should have gone when her first announcement was to take money off pensioners and the “farmers tax”. She hasn’t a clue and I’m so disappointed in Starmer, he needs to go as well.

I say that as a Labour supporter.

Oh no, no, no, why do that when they can be given benefits and handouts courtesy of the tax payer.

Do you mean child benefit? That’s already restricted by income (for some reason it’s not technically classed as a means tested benefit, but you don’t get it if your income is over a certain level).

They won’t all leave!