{"id":41082,"date":"2026-05-20T02:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T02:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/41082\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T02:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T02:28:15","slug":"uk-drones-hub-delayed-as-starmer-stalls-on-defense-cash-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/41082\/","title":{"rendered":"UK drones hub delayed as Starmer stalls on defense cash \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two industry representatives said the site was meant to hit initial operating capacity in February, but had not yet been opened due to a combination of factors \u2014 including the continued postponement of Britain&#8217;s long-promised Defence Investment Plan (DIP).<\/p>\n<p>Keir Starmer has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/defense-funding-gap-haunting-keir-starmer\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">faced sustained criticism<\/a> over his failure to bring forward the plan \u2014 originally promised in late 2025. The DIP is meant to allocate government funding to tackle a host of threats identified in a government-wide defense review over the next ten years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But two people familiar with the facility \u2014 one of the same industry figures cited above and a local councillor \u2014 said part of the reason that the Swindon plant had stalled was that Downing Street had planned for Starmer to open the facility when he launches the DIP, which is still in limbo.<\/p>\n<p>Starmer is currently trying to signal stability as he faces <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/keir-starmer-uk-labour-leadership-crisis-andy-burnham-wes-streeting\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ongoing challenges to his leadership<\/a>, as part of which he is expected to boost defense spending. <\/p>\n<p>However, Downing Street has not yet earmarked a date for the release of the DIP, according to a senior government official, despite pressure to make the announcement ahead of the forthcoming G7 and NATO summits. No. 10 declined to comment when approached. <\/p>\n<p>The town has already attracted extensive investment from defense tech firms specializing in drones, including German-owned Stark, British start-up Flyby Technology, and Portugal-based Tekever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two industry representatives said the site was meant to hit initial operating capacity in February, but had not&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2097,1358,2100,173,502,371,94,20578,1166,5963,4696,460,2233,1426,5,6,461],"class_list":["post-41082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-companies","tag-defense","tag-drones","tag-england","tag-industry","tag-investment","tag-keir-starmer","tag-latvia","tag-logistics","tag-manufacturing","tag-portugal","tag-security","tag-stability","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116604547976147403","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}