The European Space Agency has just chosen Leicester to host its startup hub. Why has no one reported that?

Imagine if a European agency had just announced that it was to close a site in the Midlands, withdrawing from Britain and taking jobs of scientists with it. It isn’t hard to work out where that would feature on BBC news – up top. It would be presented as another cost of Brexit, another result of the foolish decision the country made in 2016 to leave the EU. Interviewees would be dredged up to tell us we had condemned ourselves us to become a deskilled economy.

News outlets seem so obsessed with woke and culture war issues that we don’t get to learn about important pieces of investment

Now imagine that a European agency had actually just announced that it is to open a new base in the Midlands. You won’t have known about it by reading the BBC website, but that is exactly what has just happened. The European Space Agency (not part of the EU) has announced that it is to open a ‘space tech incubation unit’ in Leicester to help start-ups access the expertise they need, whether it be from university research to large corporations.