With just a few weeks until he is expected to step down as prime minister, Keir Starmer chose a drone factory in Berkshire as the location from which to deliver his swansong: the Defence Investment Plan (DIP). Starmer was joined at the venue by Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis – in the job for less than three weeks – and, unexpectedly, Chancellor Rachel Reeves to present the headlines of the DIP, published today after a delay of more than seven months.
Reeves confirmed that the Treasury is handing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) £15 billion over the next four years as part of the DIP. She went on to repeat the line frequently peddled during Starmer’s tenure that Labour has overseen the ‘biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the Cold War’ – which jars somewhat with the fact the MoD claims to need approximately £28 billion over the next four years to fulfil existing commitments and build on them. Praising Starmer personally, she said that his ‘absolute moral clarity’ on defence ‘would go down as part of his legacy’.
Starmer presented the DIP as a spending plan built on tough choices. There will be a £5 billion investment in drone production over the next four years, which will provide a variety of ‘uncrewed’ drones for all three branches of the armed forces. Investment in Britain’s nuclear deterrent is being lifted to £64 billion over the same time frame, to be spent on building a new sovereign warhead and nuclear submarines and buying 12 F-35 fighter jets.
