Ben Wallace has delivered an epic slapdown to Johnny Mercer as the pair’s feud over defence spending erupted once again.
The defence secretary pointed out his Tory colleague was just “a junior minister” and had no experience of running a Whitehall department.
The pair are at odds over the size of the defence budget, which Wallace is lobbying to be increased by £10 billion.
Mercer, the veterans minister, yesterday said it was “not credible” for Wallace to say the UK’s armed forces had been “hollowed out” by budget cuts over the last decade.
Asked about the remarks on LBC, Wallace said: “Johnny is a junior minister, and Johnny luckily doesn’t have to run the budget.
“You know, I have a defence budget that has to deal, like all the other budgets, with inflation, with changes to threat, and I have to just deal with that. And that’s my job.”
Asked by presenter Nick Ferrari if Mercer was being “naive”, Wallace said: “No, no, no. I just think, you know, his experience is not… he’s not the secretary of state.
“I run a department of 224,000 people or something like that and he’s got 12 people in the office.”
In a further twist, Mercer’s wife accused Wallace of showing “disdain” for her husband.
Felicity Cornelius-Mercer tweeted: “Wow. The disdain from Ben Wallace for Johnny Mercer and his office for veterans affairs really is something else.
“You may start to realise why care for veterans is such a daily battle.”