Keir Starmer’s grand plan: Will the UK become the world’s biggest arms exporter?
Keir Starmer has announced a new UK defence spending plan – but how will his plans to produce and sell more weapons sit with long-time Labour supporters?
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In brief…
- Labour has unveiled a new plan, costing billions, to boost the UK’s arms industry, promising it will create tens of thousands of jobs across the country.
- The News Agents say his goal appears to be to make the UK “the arms exporter to the world”, hoping to improve the UK’s security and revive its flagging economy in one move.
- But with the “scrappy” warfare seen across the globe in recent years including drone strikes and rigged electronic devices, is Starmer investing in the wrong sort of weaponry?
What’s the story?
Keir Starmer has, it appears, a plan to increase the UK’s defence and boost its economy in one swift action.
That action? To build more weapons in this country, creating jobs and increase profits selling arms across the world.
Today, the Prime Minister unveiled a new defence review, as the UK seeks to counter what it sees as growing threats from places such as Russia and China.
Keir Starmer announced a cut in UK overseas aid in May 2025, to increase its defence spending – with today's review being the result of that controversial money-saving initiative, and one he appears to hope will make the UK a bigger developer and exporter of weapons across the world.
What's in the defence review?
- Starmer has promised to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, and to 3% in the next parliament.
- He has said this increase will result in 400,000 new jobs across the UK.
- His goal, the PM added, is to make Britain a "battle-ready, armour-clad nation" and said he intends to ensure the UK is prepared to fight a war.
- Six new munitions factories will be built across the UK, Starmer promised, saying they will build long-range weapons.
- The UK will build 12 new nuclear submarines.
But with the government cutting winter fuel benefits for pensioners and set to slash Personal Independence Payment (PIP) payments for disabled people, this could prove a divisive strategy for Labour.
Jon Sopel says it now appears Starmer is “more interested in the warfare state than the welfare state.”
Has the world changed – or has Labour changed?
The News Agents say Starmer’s pledge of billions to invest in the UK’s military industry will not go down well with long-time Labour supporters, MPs and members.
Emily Maitlis says the choice of location is key to Starmer’s speech, which took place in Glasgow, once known as “the ship builder to the world,” in the past.
“Keir Starmer is, very consciously, trying to tie the need for Britain to defend itself with the need for Britain's economy to start revolving around a defence structure,” she says.
“This is all a very deliberate and coordinated strand of how to re-foot what is happening to our economy.
“And that strand is to make the UK the weapons exporter to the world.”
Jon describes Starmer’s apparent intention to reshape the UK into a major arms exporter as a “difficult political sell” at a time his government is being accused of taking money from some of the most vulnerable in society.
“Labour is still talking about the winter fuel allowance and whether it's going to be reversed, or still maintaining the two-child-cap on child benefit – which Gordon Brown has been very active in saying needs to be lifted if it wants to alleviate poverty among families,” Jon says.
“Keir Starmer is having to say Labour doesn't have the money for that right now, but there is money for defence, and I think that is causing unease in Labour circles.
“Labour has always been a bit more pacifist, and there is a strong element within the Labour movement that will be horrified about the idea of more nuclear submarines or more defence establishments being built to manufacture weapons. That isn't part of a lot of Labour member's DNA.”
Is Starmer preparing the UK for war?
Emily and Jon say the UK now faces threats from both the east and the west.
Russia in one direction, and the growing disinterest from America in showing any support, or even positivity, towards NATO and a western defence umbrella.
“I’m sure – given the cost of living, given how people's lives are at the moment – they're not going to want to hear that we're spending more on weapons,” says Emily.
“But I’m sure people thought that in the 1930s. Maybe nobody ever thinks they have to be ready for war, and maybe what we are hearing from Keir Starmer is there is an urgency here.”
Germany recently sent its first permanent military deployment since World War Two to Lithuania, to protect the country, and Europe, from any further advance from Vladimir Putin’s forces.
But if Starmer is preparing the UK for conflict too, is he bracing for the right sort – or has warfare moved on, as evidenced by the war in Ukraine?
On Sunday, in an incident Russian bloggers are already referring to as the country’s own ‘Pearl Harbour’, Ukrainian drones destroyed a third of Russia’s strategic bombers in one assault.
“They were high tech drones, but they're cheap pieces of kit that were put in crates,” says Jon.
“They'd been transported to various places in Russia and with the flick of a switch the crates opened, and a swarm of drones came out that targeted rows of bombers lined up on runways – one of them three and a half 1000 miles away from Ukraine.
Emily questions whether tactics such as this, and Israel’s 2024 pager attack in Lebanon and Syria, which killed 42 people, suggest that modern warfare is more “insurgent and scrappy,” than the high-scale assault Starmer is now prepping for.
Jon says this “scrappy” modern combat conflicts with the “conventional defence argument” that “mutually assured destruction”, through the threat of the nuclear weapons Starmer intends the UK to produce, is what really keeps the peace.