08.48 EDT
Badenoch claims Healey's resignation shows Starmer's premiership 'falling apart'
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has said that the resignation of John Healey demonstrates that Keir Starmer’s premiership “is falling apart”.
Speaking to reporters, she stated: “His health secretary resigned two weeks ago. His defence secretary has resigned at a critical time when we are facing global threats, and he is doing so because the prime minister is trying to please his backbenchers by putting money into welfare instead of defence. We need to start funding defence. We need to get to 3% of GDP by the end of this parliament … Keir Starmer has no plan whatsoever. I don’t see how he can stay in this job. He can’t run the country. He is paralysed because his backbenchers only want to spend money on welfare.”
All oppositions need a simple attack line to use against the government, and at the moment Badenoch is running hard with the line that Labour won’t spend money on X, or cut taxes for Y, because its MPs just want to spend more money on benefits. This makes for compelling rhetoric, and because benefit spending is rising fast in some areas it has enough truth in it to make it arguable. But, as an overall explanation for what is happening with spending, it is almost wholly wrong. See here for more on this, or here.
