When the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said on Sunday that Britain needed to increase its defence spending and could not ignore the demand for conventional weapons, she turned the spotlight on a sector that has long been in the doldrums as defence budgets ran down.
Her remarks were underlined by a pledge from the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that his country would spend more than €100 billion on modernising its armed forces in the face of the Ukraine crisis — views echoed by other Nato countries.
While some investors have avoided shares in arms manufacturers on ethical grounds, current events make a powerful case for reconsidering the sector. It is only prudent for western Europe to prepare for the worst, in a strictly defensive posture.
