Brexit’s Latest Savior Comes With Missiles Attached
It’s hard to see how Britain can afford to make a next-generation fighter jet.
It's chocks away for the Brexit fly boys.
Photographer: IWM/Getty Images/Imperial War MuseumsBritish Prime Minister Theresa May once mocked her opponent Jeremy Corbyn for dreaming up projects that only a “magic money tree” could afford. Yet she’s started to indulge in a little fantastical forestry of her own, judging by her ever-growing list of post-Brexit spending promises.
The latest gift designed to give the country a fighting chance after its EU departure is a combat jet dubbed “Tempest” — presumably in homage to a fighter plane used during the Second World War rather than an oblique joke about May’s political position. The government says the project will keep Britain at the top table of military powers, support thousands of jobs and enter production just as the Eurofighter Typhoon — a Franco-German-Italian-U.K.-Spanish project dreamed up in friendlier times — is phased out.