Congress was addressed by John Healey MP, the Secretary oi State for Defence, I looked for the text of the speech on Labour and the gov.uk site, but could not find it. It was however reported in the Morning Star and at the BBC, also Google AI perspectives says,
“John Healey MP used his speech at the GMB Union Congress in June 2026 to announce plans to unashamedly prioritize British companies and jobs in future defence spending.
This speech, like the whole conference was published on the GMB video feed. Possibly the key push within the new plans is that by prioritising British firms, they claim the money works twice, firstly by buying weapons to secure the UK, but secondly by investing in UK industries and workers. There are some who argue that defence investment is a dead investment as there is no, or little, investment multiplier effect, but they can’t argue that there is no multiplier effect from spend on labour costs. Actually the idea that defence industry investment has no civil multiplier effect seems to be extraordinarily weak.
Healey name checked the defence factories that the GMB organises and of course, defended the need for Trident, and rather strangely, declared the desire to see the Union Jack on top of every weapon. (Very Dr. Strangelove). This strange patriotism avoids talking about the UK’s dependence on US arms industry and the current unreliability of the United States as a provider; it also may make co-operation with Europe and the EU member states more difficult as the UK’s failure to join the EU SAFE programme, and the continued conversations about the EU’s industrial accelerator Act, aka the “Made in Europe” proposals shows.
What this hubris also fails to address is that developing some of these weapons is now beyond the UK alone, we need allies and that today involves a choice.
I had written a piece on defence, and defence sovereignty earlier in the year.
Two days later, Healey and his No 2, Al Cairns resigned from Government, I posted a video of their resignation statements in my blog, …