Buying British Can Labour's defence plans spur growth?

Even in a room full of generals from around the world decked in military braid, the arrival of the prime minister causes a stir.

- Jasper Jolly

At the Farnborough International Airshow this week knots of advisers and armed police surrounded Keir Starmer as he walked among the stalls, occasionally allowing a favoured executive or nervous apprentice into the inner circle.

A few words with the prime minister will always be valuable to heads of big business. But at this year's version of the biennial aviation and weapons show, defence companies in particular were hanging on the words of the first Labour prime minister since 2010 for any hint of his intentions.

Labour was out in force at the airshow; a record number of cabinet ministers were attending.

Starmer told executives that some of their "fingerprints" were on the party's plan for economic growth.

Yet beyond the warm words the new government has a host of questions to answer on what the future of UK defence policy looks like and whether more of the billions it plans to spend on weapons can be used to spur the goal of boosting economic growth.

Defence chiefs hope those answers come quickly. Labour is carrying out a strategic defence review, due to be completed in the first half of 2025, in which all large industrial contracts will be closely scrutinised, a party source says.

The review could consider how best to maintain an effective UK military capability and boost manufacturing employment.

However, the defence sector presents ethical dilemmas, most obviously now with the growing calls for a ban on UK arms exports to Israel, amid the huge number of civilian deaths in Gaza.