Rishi Sunak to appoint new defence secretary after Ben Wallace says he is quitting

Receive free UK politics & policy updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest UK politics & policy news every morning.

Rishi Sunak is to appoint a new defence secretary after Ben Wallace announced he will soon quit after four years in the post, and will not fight the general election expected next year.

He said he had decided to leave the government at Rishi Sunak’s next cabinet reshuffle, due in the coming weeks, and will quit Westminster at the next election.

Wallace has served as defence secretary under three prime ministers and was previously touted as a future leader of the Conservative party partly because of his popularity among Tory activists.

Potential successors to Wallace as defence secretary include Treasury chief secretary John Glen and security minister Tom Tugendhat, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The post is an important cabinet job, partly because of the UK’s leading role in supporting western efforts to help Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country.

There had been rising expectations that Wallace could quit UK politics after he made clear his interest in becoming the next secretary-general of Nato, the military alliance — but he was thwarted after US president Joe Biden refused to back his candidacy.

Wallace told the Sunday Times he supported Sunak’s efforts to tame high inflation, but suggested he would need to do far more to win the next election, saying there would need to be “a moment where the prime minister banks the sensible steadiness on the economy and then uses that to explain to the public the vision of 2024”.

Labour enjoys a big opinion poll lead over the Conservatives and more than 40 Tory MPs have announced they will step down at the election.

Wallace said his decision to stand down as an MP was not related to the fact his constituency of Wyre and Preston North is being scrapped in a redrawing of electoral boundaries.

A week ago people close to Wallace told the Financial Times that he was not planning to quit politics, claiming the speculation was “rubbish”.

The 53-year former captain in the Scots Guards was first elected as an MP in 2005, and before that spent four years as a member of the Scottish parliament.

Wallace is a close ally of former prime minister Boris Johnson. After Johnson quit Downing Street last year, Wallace surprised some colleagues by ruling himself out of the contest to succeed him.

Wallace is the most popular member of Sunak’s cabinet with Tory members, according to Conservativehome, the website focused on the party.

Wallace said his proudest achievement as defence secretary was ending a long period of cuts at the Ministry of Defence, unlocking “genuinely new money” and convincing Downing Street that defence was “core”.

He warned that Britain could find itself in a conflict by 2030, most likely with Russia. “Towards the end of the decade, the world is going to be much more unsafe, more insecure,” he told the Sunday Times. “I think we will find ourselves in a conflict. Whether it is a cold or a warm conflict, I think we’ll be in a difficult position.”

Wallace played down the idea that he would take up a job in the defence industry, saying he could try something new.

“I sometimes think I’d just like to go and do things I love, like Formula One or horseracing — just do something completely different,” he added.