Emily Maitlis

And I think the Strategic Defence Review and what Healy was trying to do... And that is why this is utterly catastrophic for Starmer and for Rachel Reeves that John Healy has said...

enough i can't stand this any longer and i'm quitting and this ahead of a nato summit this ahead of a g7 summit at a time when britain is trying to show leadership on this stuff about what is the future defense of europe look like and sitting with emmanuel macron and you know and chancellor merz and saying we've got to step up we've got to take responsibility and now his defense secretary has walked over something as fundamental

as, you know, the accusation in the letter, you're not keeping the country safe.

I'm not sure I buy that.

I know John Healey a bit.

He's been around a long time.

I just don't think that he would have done this because he's got his eye on what Andy Burnham's next government might look like and how he might fit into it.

I think this is just born of the frustration of what I've heard from so many government ministers now saying that he just can't take a decision.

He's, you know, on the defence thing, he thinks that it ought to be for the ministers from different government departments to sit amongst themselves and come up with a conclusion and just present it to him that we've sorted this out.

It's all right.

We'll get the extra 13 billion for defence by doing this, that and the other.

It's always going to be driven by the prime minister.

And I think it shows his lack of political deafness, his inability to manage relationships.

And this thing that I keep hearing is that Keir Starmer never talks to anybody.

He never has a kind of, you know, look, let's chat about what this problem is and how we're going to solve it and what's the best way.

He reads briefing papers, but doesn't talk to anyone.

And I think that this is just political ineptitude on a grand scale of what has happened, that you end up with John Healey deciding, I can stand it no longer.

And I suspect that John Healey, you know, he had the confidence of his other cabinet colleagues.

They speak very highly of him.

He had the confidence of the MOD.