UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is planning to leave the government amid a cabinet reshuffle and will not stand at the next general election, he has said. Sunday Times newspaper.
Wallace informed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of his plans on June 16 but hopes to make an announcement this summer, the newspaper said on Saturday. A cabinet reshuffle is expected by September.
Wallace said: “I will never stop again.” But he ruled out a “premature” election and forced another election, the newspaper said.
“I entered politics in the Scottish Parliament in 1999. That’s 24 years,” Wallace, who has been chief security officer since July 2019, told the newspaper.
The development comes days after Wallace argued that Ukraine should be given more emphasis to express “thank you” to “doubting politicians” in the US and other allied countries who may not be entirely convinced of the need to maintain military and economic support for Kyiv while protecting the country from Russia.
“There is a little caveat here which is, whether you like it or not people want to see appreciation,” Wallace told reporters at a NATO summit in Lithuania on July 12.
Sunak was forced to try to quell the chaos caused by Wallace’s comments. The Prime Minister said that the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy is he appreciated to the allies of Kyiv “innumerable times.”
The name of Wallace was mixed with the potential secretary general of NATO before the defense alliance at the beginning of July agreed to extend the term of Jens Stoltenberg by one year.