'Actions speak for themselves': Healey 'rejects' Trump's HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth insults

John Healey said “actions, rather than words, speak for themselves” as he defended the UK’s response to the Middle East conflict against criticism from the White House. Mr Trump has made several insulting comments about HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth ahead of the agreed ceasefire with Iran.

At a Downing Street press conference which he used to reveal British armed forces had foiled a Russian submarine operation in UK waters, Mr Healey warned the “primary threat” to Britain and Nato still came from Moscow. Deploying all UK military resources to the Middle East would not have been in the national interest, he said in an apparent rebuttal to criticism over the scale of assets dispatched by Britain after the breakout of the Iran war.

The defence secretary told the televised news event: “When a crisis erupts noisily and dangerously, as it has done in the Middle East, I understand people questioning why all UK military assets and personnel have not been deployed to deal with it, but that is not in Britain’s national interest. The greatest threats are often unseen and silent, and as demands on defence rise, we must deploy our resources to best effect.”

He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin “would have wanted us, I expect, to be distracted, and my purpose today is to demonstrate to him publicly that we have not been”. “We have our eye on him, that we recognise he and Russia pose the primary threat to UK security and Nato security,” Mr Healey said. Russia was likely to be sharing intelligence and training Iranian forces in drone tactics, with Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine “reflected” in many of the ways Iran was attacking Middle East countries, the defence secretary said.

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The UK has sent some resources including around 1,000 personnel and Royal Navy Type-45 destroyer HMS Dragon to the region, but has limited its involvement in the conflict to “defensive” action. This stance has angered Mr Trump, who described British aircraft carriers as “toys” and “broken-down” and made repeated attacks on prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.

Asked what he thought members of the British armed forces would want him to say of Mr Trump’s descriptions of UK aircraft carriers, Mr Healey told journalists on Thursday: “I like to let our actions, rather than our words, speak for themselves. And I would just say about our carriers, I reject the descriptions that have been levelled against them.

“Our carrier completed an eight-month tour last year in the Indo-Pacific, in which it led ships of 14 other nations during the period of its operation, including the US. It meant that it is now, because of that operation, fully certified as Nato’s flagship and that is the role that it will now play as we deploy it to the High North.”