ANDREW GRIFFITH: Healey must quit this job too if he fails to ramp up defence spending

This week is make-your-mind-up time for Chancellor John Healey. 

After weeks of showing more evasion than an SAS patrol behind enemy lines, he needs to either pull the trigger on properly funding our Armed Forces or - if by the end of his Budget speech he has not done so - he must resign.

We are living in an era of extraordinary threats. This summer, Russia's embassy in London warned that the more Britain helps Ukraine, 'the higher the price it will pay'.

Russian vessels have been caught live firing in the English Channel, and the security services talk of 'grey zone' warfare - tactics such as cyberattacks - enacted on British soil.

Earlier this month, Nato's most senior commander in Europe set out how the alliance would attempt to stop a Russian invasion at the border, adding that he hoped he would never have to give the orders.

Defending our nation is the first duty of Government, and yet the Chancellor has so far been dithering about finding the money even to pay the country's insurance premium. 

Vladimir Putin is not going to be deterred by an Andy Burnham TikTok video or by the Chancellor musing about his preference for pork scratchings. We must take ourselves seriously to be a serious nation.

Nobody understands the stakes better than the Chancellor himself. In June he resigned as Defence Secretary rather than put his name to a plan he warned 'could make the country less safe'. 

Pictured Chancellor John Healey arriving at Downing Street to attend his first Cabinet meeting hosted by Andy Burnham on July 21, 2026 

He wrote that 'a headmark date for 3 per cent of GDP on defence in 2030 is what Britain must set', and he reminded the Prime Minister of the assessment that there 'could be an attack by Russia on Nato as soon as 2030'.

Three per cent is not an abstract figure. It is the minimum required for the United Kingdom to remain even in the top half of the rate of defence spending among Nato members. 

Nor will it be acceptable for the Government to obfuscate by talking instead about its Defence Investment Plan. 

That is an important milestone and already in the spending plans, but it leaves us far short of both the 3 per cent threshold and the sustainable funding our military needs to plan and place orders with confidence.

Living hand to mouth is no way to fund defence. Between advising us to stockpile food and water, the Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, admitted he is 'having to prioritise', as it emerged that £2 billion has been taken out

of the Army's armoured vehicle programme, including a vehicle designed to recover damaged Boxer troop carriers from

the battlefield. As my colleague Ben Obese-Jecty - who served in Afghanistan and Iraq - has warned, that risks leaving broken-down vehicles, and the soldiers inside them, stranded in full view of the enemy.

Some decisions in Westminster are difficult, but this need not be one of them.

Under Labour over the course of this Parliament, welfare payouts will rise by another £50 billion per year. The 'gap' to be funded on defence spending is just a fraction of that, at around £10 billion per annum.

'Warfare not welfare' should be the Chancellor's adage, and if he needs Conservative support to reform his out-of-control welfare spending and to face down his recalcitrant backbenchers, as Kemi Badenoch has said previously, it will be forthcoming.

My first decision as Shadow Chancellor was to set out how we would properly fund defence, paid for with savings rather than borrowing. 

We would get a grip on welfare, scrap the Chagos deal, move research and development funding, and turn the National Wealth Fund into a National Defence and Resilience Bank to deliver for defence instead of vanity Net Zero projects.

Just like our plans to scrap stamp duty and cut inheritance tax, every pound has been fully costed and transparently set out.

After a week in which the national debt passed £3 trillion for the first time, such prudence is the only way. It's what I left a 26-year career in business to do, and it's this focus on the detail that marks out the difference to past governments.

On Wednesday the Chancellor can make sure that no British serviceman or woman is ever sent to fight short of everything except courage.

He can send the signal to our adversaries that we take ourselves and our defence seriously by allocating the proper funding to defence - with no more dither and delay.