Ben Wallace has confirmed that he will resign as defence secretary in the next Cabinet reshuffle.
“I’m not standing next time,” Mr. Wallace said.
“I went into politics in the Scottish parliament in 1999. That’s 24 years. I’ve spent well over seven years with three phones by my bed.”
Around 40 Conservative MPs have resigned recently or announced they will not stand in the next election, including former cabinet ministers Dominic Raab and Sajid Javid and chairman of the influential 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers Sir Graham Brady.
Mr. Wallace has held the seat in Wyre and Preston North since the constituency was created in 2010. The constituency is set to disappear in the next election after boundary changes, but Mr. Wallace said he’s not standing down over fear of losing to Labour in a new constituency.
“In my part of the world, I don’t think those voters are yet convinced at all by Keir Starmer. It’s definitely up for grabs,” he said.
Mr. Wallace, who survived three prime ministers as defence secretary, played a key role in the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was a close ally of Boris Johnson.
He told The Times of London how he had used different types of whiskey as code names for Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon or Harpoon anti-ship missiles when communicating with his Ukrainian counterpart on the brink of Russia’s invasion.
Speaking of the future, Mr. Wallace believes the world will be in either “a cold or a warm conflict” by the end of the decade, such as a “total breakdown of politics in the Pacific” or a resurgence of the ISIS terrorist group or al-Qaeda in Africa.
He also warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin has the ability to “lash out” in the next few years.
Mr. Wallace previously expressed an interest in standing for the role of NATO secretary-general before it was announced the current chief, Jens Stoltenberg, had been given another year in charge.
The minister told The Economist there were a “lot of unresolved issues” in the military alliance and “it’s not going to happen,” and he later downplayed the prospect of a future bid to run the organisation.
He told The Times of London that EU countries should pay more to the defence alliance.
“You can’t take for granted your allies and partners,” Mr. Wallace said.
“You have to contribute. If everyone in NATO matched our donations to Ukraine as a percentage of GDP, there would be another £20 billion of military aid available. It’s still the case that only 20 percent of the defence spending of NATO is by EU members,” he added.
Last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak shut down comments from Mr. Wallace in which he suggested Ukraine should show “gratitude” for the military support it has been given.
Mr. Wallace had made the remark after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, branded it “absurd” for NATO to insist there were still conditions for his nation to meet before it can gain membership once the war with Russia is over.
Mr. Zelenskyy later said: “I believe that we were always grateful to United Kingdom.
“I don’t know what he meant and how else we should be grateful.”
Popular within the Tory party, Mr. Wallace is the longest continuously serving minister in government, having been security minister under Theresa May before being promoted to defence secretary by Boris Johnson.
He was previously appointed as a whip in 2014 and a junior minister in the Northern Ireland Office in 2015 while David Cameron was prime minister.
Mr. Wallace ruled himself out of the running for the Conservative leadership last year, despite being an early frontrunner in the race to replace Mr. Johnson.
