Buying British: can Labour’s defence policy really help UK industry?

Questions over whether plan to spend billions on weapons will work as a tool to spur economic 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. At the Farnborough international airshow this week, knots of advisers and armed police surrounded Keir Starmer as he walked through the stalls, occasionally allowing a favoured chief executive or a nervous apprentice into the inner circle.

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