Healey to Shelve the 3% Defence Target He Resigned Over
Chancellor John Healey will not set a date for spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence in his October Budget, the Treasury confirmed — deferring the roadmap to next year’s spending review. In June, as defence secretary, he resigned over precisely this, writing that “a headmark date for 3% of GDP on defence in 2030 is what Britain must set”. Now he says fiscal discipline comes first: “We simply can’t deal with the problems we face as a country by maxing out the country’s credit card.”
Politics rarely supplies irony this clean: the man who resigned because the Treasury would not commit to 3 per cent now runs the Treasury and will not commit to 3 per cent. The charitable reading is that he has seen the books; the unkind one leads every front page. The substance beneath the irony is genuinely hard — a £1.2bn annual hole in the existing defence investment plan, a NATO pledge of 3.5 per cent by 2035 hovering above it, and reports of Washington preparing pressure tactics that reportedly reach as far as questioning Falklands sovereignty. This week’s “beyond critical” Patriot disclosure is the backdrop that makes the date matter. Watch the spending review timeline — and whether the resignation letter gets quoted back at him across the despatch box.