Emily Maitlis

So when someone like him goes, you just think, oh my God, it must be rotten at the core.

This day might be seen as the moment where it all collapsed on Keir Starmer.

This has come out of the blue.

The resignation of the Defence Secretary, John Healey, and the most withering, excoriating resignation letter that you can imagine.

Accusing Keir Starmer of having been unable and the Treasury unwilling...

to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country.

It's John.

It's Maitlis.

And this letter is quite something.

And you think of the resignation letters that there have been down the ages and the decisive effects that they have had.

And I suppose the one you'd compare this to is Geoffrey Howe's resignation that led to the fall of Thatcher, because it seemed such a kind of unlikely voice before.

That would be expressing such displeasure.

And here we have John Healey, as you say, this loyal, dependable figure who was seen as the absolute safe pair of hands in the cabinet, who kind of rose above party divisions and ideology and was just getting on with the job of the defence of the nation to write such a letter about the failure.

of the government to come to grips with this defence investment plan.

So last year we had a strategic defence review that George Robertson led and presented about what the government needed to do.

And this was going to be, well, OK, this is how we're going to pay for it and where the money is going to come from and how we're going to invest in the defence of the nation.

And this has been waited for and waited for and waited for.

And in his letter, John Healy sets out how,

it has just gone on and on without any conclusion and that when the conclusion was apparently getting near John Healey felt hang on Keir you're pulling a fast one on me and so John Healey has left the government in what seems to me to be an enormous blow to Starmer when there was so little chance of him surviving anyway

Well, look, we are at that stage now.