A government aide, granted anonymity to speak freely, said their focus was on “re-shoring” defense manufacturing — also seen as a priority by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — and described this “a Keynesian and a left-wing thing to do.”
“We’re putting state money into manufacturing which will help sustain communities in those places,” the same person said.
Fred Thomas, a Labour MP elected last year who served in the armed forces, summed up the Labour defense agenda, arguing that “a safe, secure country” is a prerequisite for a fairer society.
He said defense jobs, “generally speaking, are high-quality, unionized, secure work that involves skills and career progression.”
In this argument for a more military-minded Labour, aides say there is a conscious effort to align with Labour heroes of the past.
Glen O’Hara, a historian of postwar Britain at Oxford Brookes University, said Starmer and McSweeney were evoking “a certain sort of patriotic Labour” embodied by post-World War II big beasts like Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Denis Healey.