UK armed forces minister Al Carns resigns

Al Carns, the minister for the Armed Forces, followed John Healey in resigning from the Government after a row about defence spending.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Carns warned the UK faces a “more unstable and dangerous world than at any point in recent decades, and having spent most of my adult life in uniform, I understand what public service in such a moment demands”.

“It is for this very reason I cannot continue,” he added.

Carns, who has made it clear he will stand in any future race to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, is a former special forces commander who served five tours in Afghanistan and has been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.

In his letter, he went on to criticise the Government’s long-delayed defence investment plan, saying it is “neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded”.

“I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box [sic] and defend a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task,” Carns said.

However, the criticisms laid out in the former Royal Marines’ letter span well beyond defence. “The machinery of government itself has been left to decay,” he wrote. “Decisions that should take days take months.

“Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it.”

Carns also criticised the Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, saying it “risks failing the very veterans it claims to protect”.

“These two failures are the same failure. We ask soldiers to fight for this country. In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it’s done. We are failing on both.”

Announcing his resignation as defence secretary earlier, Healey said he had been “left with no other option” after being forced to make decisions that would make Britain “less safe”.