In yet another dramatic twist in government, Armed Forces Minister Al Carns has followed John Healey out the door.
In his resignation letter, penned to the Prime Minister, Mr Carns said: "The machinery of government itself has been left to decay. Decisions that should take months have taken years… we are trying to govern a more dangerous world with processes designed for a calmer one."
The double resignation comes amid a backdrop of wrangling within government over funding for the long-delayed military spending plan, and one that Mr Carns feels is not built for the threat the UK is currently facing.
Having served 24 years in the Royal Marines, the former colonel struck a measured tone.
"A serving minister cannot ask for fellow veterans to trust a process he no longer trusts himself," he said.
"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."
Lessons need to be drawn, argues Carns
Speaking to BBC's Today programme, Mr Carns said: "I didn't think the funding settlement was correct for defence, and I didn't agree with the Defence Investment Plan, which I thought was looking at how to fight the last war rather than the next one."
He added: "Some of the old legacy capabilities that we have – in fact, that weren't even ordered by us, were ordered by the Conservative party many, many years ago – some difficult, courageous decisions need to be made to get rid and replace them with some of the innovative technologies we're seeing in Ukraine."
It is a lesson that the former Armed Forces Minister has been urging more or less since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Delivering a speech at the London Defence Conference in April, he warned: "In the future, if Russia looks over a Nato, a JEF or an allied border and sees a force that has not adapted to the lessons of Ukraine, it will not see deterrence – it will see an opportunity."
Preparing for the wars of today
The much-delayed Defence Investment Plan, due to be published before the Nato summit on 7 July, but strongly rumoured to appear this week, was said to contain just a £13.5bn financial settlement for the military, well short of the £28bn that military chiefs had reportedly asked for to fund the commitments set out by the Strategic Defence Review in June 2024.
As Mr Carns poignantly stated to the Today Programme, the funding extends beyond military spending alone.
"It's not just about bombs, battleships, and bullets," he said. "It's about whether you get a good wage after a day's work, whether you can go to the NHS, whether you can get back into work, [and] whether you get the public services you require."
He added: "Defence is much bigger than that. It's actually about national resilience. It's one of the key themes I wanted to see in the Defence Investment Plan, resilience of our nation and our population."
After leaving the Royal Marines in 2024, Mr Carns was elected Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak the same year. He was subsequently appointed Minister for the Armed Forces the following year.
Speaking to LBC, he said: "I have never quit anything in my life. It's the first thing I've quit – but sometimes you've got to make a principled decision.
"We also need to look into the defence department, refine our procurement process, and make sure every pound of taxpaying money is spent on the right capability in the right manner.
"But we've also got to have the correct armed forces equipped with the correct capability to fight the next war, not the last one, recognising that the problems abroad impact us here in the UK, whether that's inflation around food pricing, whether that's the Middle East on fuel, and recognise that if we don't have a strong armed forces, we can't actually have any leverage over those decisions.
"Spending on one protects the other," he added.
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