Campaign Against Arms Trade

My latest in @declassifiedUK is a shocking story of incompetence, malfeasance, and unlawful behaviour: Britain's Ministry of Defence paid £1.5 billion for drones which kept crashing and couldn't fly in bad weather. The contract was awarded to Israel's largest arms firm Elbit Systems and Thales from France. Those companies squeezed the MoD for years, with the drones costing £88,400 per flying hour and executives charging £18,000 a month for hotels. Meanwhile, Elbit and Thales produced an export variant of the same drone and signed a £400 million contract to sell them to Romania. Despite everything, they were assisted by the UK government, which subsidised the production of those drones and promised to support export licenses. Shipping documents expose how dozens of drone components have been sent from Britain to Israel since the contract with Romania was signed - but they haven't been onward exported to Romania. And open-source evidence now strongly suggests Elbit has been testing the drones in the illegally occupied Golan Heights, likely breaching UK export law. Full story👇 declassifieduk.org/how-a-failed-b…

The government’s decision to ban the al-Quds march in London marks a worrying escalation of its authoritarian crackdown on our civil liberties, that should concern everyone who believes in our fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly. 1/6 theguardian.com/politics/2026/…