Starmer Seals £37bn Missile Pact at Farewell Summit
Sir Keir Starmer signed off a £37bn ($50bn), twelve-nation European programme to develop next-generation long-range “deep precision strike” missiles over the next decade — a British-led initiative confirmed in a joint statement at his final NATO summit as Prime Minister. The partnership, spanning France, Germany, the Nordic and Baltic states and others, aims to pool Europe’s deep-strike development rather than build a single weapon, drawing directly on the lessons of the war in Ukraine.
Deep-strike capability has been an American monopoly within the alliance, so a European effort to build its own is a decade-long hedge against exactly the US drawdown now under way — and a UK industrial prize, anchoring design work and jobs at home, though the missiles will not be ready until the 2030s. For Starmer it is a legacy announcement made on borrowed authority, and it does not silence the criticism that dogged him into Ankara: no route to 3.5% of GDP by 2035. The programme, like the summit’s spending pledges, becomes Andy Burnham’s to fund or reopen. Watch the workshare split between nations, and whether the incoming government reaffirms the commitment.