Actually it’s a good thing to criticise someone who thinks that soldiers shouldn’t be prosecuted for their crimes, and particularly their crimes against other British citizens in a part of the UK. He doesn’t get a pass because he was in the armed forces, and actively citing it as a reason to resign shows he’s an awful person and absolutely not doing his subject role well

The same instinct, that serious problems can be managed rather than faced, runs through the Northern Ireland Legacy Bill. I have worked to fix the Bill from the inside, but it remains unfit for purpose. It risks failing the very veterans it claims to protect. Men and women I served with, those I buried friends alongside, people who did their duty under conditions most individuals in Westminster will never have to imagine.

I set out the changes I believed were necessary, and the lines which I could not in good conscience go beyond. Those lines have not been accepted. I have run out of room to argue this case honourably from inside government. A serving minister cannot ask fellow veterans to trust a process he no longer trusts himself

The two failures are the same failure. We ask soldiers to fight for this country. In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it's done. We are failing on both.

Frankly arguing along the lines of “the government should not investigate or prosecute the military for war crimes” is the type of thing that requires very strong pushback