Politics forced the choice of engine supplier on Airbus, they shouldn't be held to account for this.
Tosh. Airbus agreed to the Nations' choice and kept to the original contract. One could argue that politics forced the choice of Airbus in the first place - they wanted the contract, they got it and need to live with it.
I don't recall the C17s being late - oh but that is because we did not let politics interfere and bought a low-risk, off the production line aircraft. Subsidising European technological advancement in aircraft/engine design is all very well, but the risk to ISD of engine/platform integration was well-known and this was not a surprise to anyone except Airbus who kept promising it would happen on time and put our military capability at significant risk.
Bottom line is Airbus knows it is not goin to be held to account because it knows how to pass the pain onto the workers in the partner Nations. A400M was a political buy that will cost us far more than we ever expected. It will work one day and should be very capable, but by then we will have a growing fleet of C17s to fill the gap caused by the delay.