"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
May has no mandate - so we ignore 17 million who voted out. You may not like it but we are leaving
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Somewhere in Europe someone is saying exactly the same thing as you -but with UK replacing the EU in the sentence.
So while for us it's all about sovereignty and control, for them it's just about the bottom line? How could it possibly go wrong?
(I feel like I've inadvertently triggered AlsoIndigo's Brexit macro.)
There is no them and us in this.
There are politicians who answer to electorates (28 of them, not the UK and EU) and there are decision makers and shareholders in individual businesses.
The latter will do whatever they think is right for their individual businesses and their bottom line.
All the politicians are doing is creating the framework that those decisions will be made within. They are not making the decisions.
Abbot is very unlikely to be the next labour leader but those odds are ok as a possible trading bet. Rogers departure from the civil service is interesting. If I was in the foreign office I would be looking at other employment options of it then great ill be happy to be ). Once migrants from Eastern Europe and the Balkans start to move elsewhere in Europe to states still in the EEA if the UK implements border control then you are likely to see an increase in demands for border control there too
Interestingly, Finland will hold the EU council presidency in the (potentially) crucial period July-Dec 2019.
The nationalist True Finns are in a coalition government in Finland
True finns are in power but there is no all.
On the broader point, to me brexit marks the end
The AfD, the FN, 5* etc do want to leave the Euro though and that would destabilise the whole EU system.
On the broader point as stated you are of course wrong for as previously stated the UK has not been a superpower since the independence of India and the end of the British Empire, attempts to use the EU to become a superpower would not make the UK a superpower on its own. The new US President openly supported Brexit before his election, post Brexit UK also has little need to concern itself with Russia, if anything Eastern European nations should be more concerned as along with France the UK provides most of Europe's defence. The nats would still lose any second referendum as all the polls show and as for the Falklands as also previously stated the new President of Argentina Mauricio Macri is a technocrat not a Fascist as was the case in 1982 and also has zero interest in starting a war with the UK his focus is on reviving the Argentine economy
You are just taking these events at face value and not looking.at.the bigger picture. I dont think.you can take much out of trumps pro brexit stance in that it was primarily motivated by politics and not some new doctrine of international relations. Similarly I would take little.comfort in the current 45 percent support for independence in scotland nor the policy of the current argentine govt towards the falklands. Britain is not a.superpower but has a lot of influence hard and soft power. Disporoportionate to its size. This is what diplomats rightly fret about. It is diminishing with brexit.
"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
She became PM because 17 million voted to Leave the EU and the reason Leave got over the line was because of the desire for border control, that is her mandate and that is what she will implement
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
Abbot is very unlikely to be the next labour leader but those odds are ok as a possible trading bet. Rogers departure from the civil service is interesting. If I was in the foreign office I would be looking at other employment options of it then great ill be happy to be ). Once migrants from Eastern Europe and the Balkans start to move elsewhere in Europe to states still in the EEA if the UK implements border control then you are likely to see an increase in demands for border control there too
Interestingly, Finland will hold the EU council presidency in the (potentially) crucial period July-Dec 2019.
The nationalist True Finns are in a coalition government in Finland
True finns are in power but there is no all.
On the broader point, to me brexit marks the end
The AfD, the FN, 5* etc do want to leave the Euro though and that would destabilise the whole EU system.
On the broader point as stated you are of course wrong for as previously stated the UK has not been a superpower since the independence of India and the end of the British Empire, attempts to use the EU to become a superpower would not make the UK a superpower on its own. The new US President openly supported Brexit before his election, post Brexit UK also has little need to concern itself with Russia, if anything Eastern European nations should be more concerned as along
You are just taking these events at face value and not looking.at.the bigger picture. I dont think.you can take much out of trumps pro brexit stance in that it was primarily motivated by politics and not some new doctrine of international relations. Similarly I would take little.comfort in the current 45 percent support for independence in scotland nor the policy of the current argentine govt towards the falklands. Britain is not a.superpower but has a lot of influence hard and soft power. Disporoportionate to its size. This is what diplomats rightly fret about. It is diminishing with brexit.
Without Brexit Trump may well not have won. You can argue about comfort or not but Scotland does the vast majority of its trade with the UK not the EU and the UK only a minority of its trade with the EU and Argentina has its own domestic problems to sort out which was precisely why the current president was elected coupled with the fact the UK has a significantly larger and more effective military than the Argentines too.
As for hard and soft power if more and more of that went to the EU then that would arguably have been a bigger threat to it than Brexit
It looks like Theresa May is going to tell the EU we are leaving lock stock and barrel and is calling their bluff over trade.
Like when Varoufakis called their bluff by threatening to bring down the European financial system? How did that turn out?
It is a bold statement and one that is likely to gather majority support
The Greeks had a referendum behind them and everything... Still it wasn't the EU that was bluffing.
61% of Greeks voted to reject the terms, and they ended up signing worse terms.
Greece was in the Euro, unlike the UK, and with 25% unemployment unlike the UK's 5%
So you're saying the amount of disruption we can threaten is more limited?
We are not aiming to threaten disruption, we are aiming to regain control of our borders, whether the EU agrees to that and some form of trade deal is up to them but that is what we will do regardless
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
No, people who are old enough to remember success before the EU are able to envision life after the EU. It's harder for people like me who are younger than UK's membership of the EU to grasp that. (Although they've convinced me they're right) The transformation into an army of europhile robots, similar to the Nats, will be complete once this lot have passed on.
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
No, people who are old enough to remember success before the EU are able to envision life after the EU. It's harder for people like me who are younger than UK's membership of the EU to grasp that. (Although they've convinced me they're right) The transformation into an army of europhile robots, similar to the Nats, will be complete once this lot have passed on.
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
No, people who are old enough to remember success before the EU are able to envision life after the EU. It's harder for people like me who are younger than UK's membership of the EU to grasp that. (Although they've convinced me they're right) The transformation into an army of europhile robots, similar to the Nats, will be complete once this lot have passed on.
You're too easily convinced
That's not an argument, just obfuscated ad hominem.
"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
She became PM because 17 million voted to Leave the EU and the reason Leave got over the line was because of the desire for border control, that is her mandate and that is what she will implement
That is not a mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary result in a certain way. That is her right, of course.
"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
May has no mandate - so we ignore 17 million who voted out. You may not like it but we are leaving
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
As a group they are overwhelmingly Remainers and pretty atypical of their electorates and contemporaries.
Pauly is correct that the young are particularly vulnerable to being house trained to accept no alternative to particular social and economic policies.
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
No, people who are old enough to remember success before the EU are able to envision life after the EU. It's harder for people like me who are younger than UK's membership of the EU to grasp that. (Although they've convinced me they're right) The transformation into an army of europhile robots, similar to the Nats, will be complete once this lot have passed on.
"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
She became PM because 17 million voted to Leave the EU and the reason Leave got over the line was because of the desire for border control, that is her mandate and that is what she will implement
That is not a mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary result in a certain way. That is her right, of course.
That is her mandate, her party has a majority in parliament and that is what her voters want and that is what the country endorsed when it decided to leave the EU
The Labour Party need a mandatory retirement age for MPs. (All parties do tbf, but Labour is particularly bad)
Gerald Kaufman Dennis Skinner David Winnick Paul Flynn Ann Clwyd Geoffrey Robinson Barry Sheerman Jim Cunningham Kelvin Hopkins Frank Field Margaret Beckett Ronnie Campbell Margaret Hodge Adrian Bailey Kevin Barron Kate Hoey Ann Coffey Roger Godsiff David Crausby
All over 70 - the by-election risk is just too great from an actuarial perspective. [This list may be wrong, DYOR]
Is it coincidence that most of the prominent Brexiteers are among their number?
As a group they are overwhelmingly Remainers and pretty atypical of their electorates and contemporaries.
Pauly is correct that the young are particularly vulnerable to being house trained to accept no alternative to particular social and economic policies.
Age should bring insight from experience.
I gather @surbiton is over 60. I'd assumed he was in his early 20s. Exceptions prove rules.
I dont think.you can take much out of trumps pro brexit stance in that it was primarily motivated by politics and not some new doctrine of international relations.
Britain is not a.superpower but has a lot of influence hard and soft power. Disporoportionate to its size. This is what diplomats rightly fret about. It is diminishing with brexit.
We cannot yet say anything about what a Trump Presidency will be. It may not even be as disruptive as his campaign. But one area where we have good reason to be able to predict is foreign policy, and I am convinced it will end up being an almost complete break with past doctrines and received wisdom. Precisely what form it will take, I can't say just yet, but I think some key assumptions will be challenged and overturned.
As for Britain's soft power, I would argue that, at least in term of diplomacy, the development of the EU's own foreign service did huge damage to the UK's diplomacy. Sure, the UK's door to the EU (to paraphrase the Chinese) was in the asset column, but it came at considerable costs elsewhere to Britain's soft power.
"The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said."
Damn that sounds like a very hard brexit to me.. BBC Website.
It sounds like leaving the EU and having a new friendlier, looser relationship with them, and most critically the 7bn people and 88% of the global economy that isn't little Europe.
Excellent.
Yep - we are removing ourselves from the market 44% of our exports go to and hoping that the damage this will do will be offset by trade agreements we can finalise with other countries who will know how desperate we are. Should be fun.
So 56% of our exports now go outside the EU not forgetting of course we will not cease trading with the EU regardless of what happens
Yes, they are going there already. We will not cease trading with the EU, but it will become more costly and less time efficient.
Well if the EU will not make any compromise on border control so be it, May has a mandate from the Leave vote and she will deliver on it
May has no mandate. She is choosing to interpret a binary yes or no vote in a certain way. So be it. But we are going to be making it more expensive and time consuming to do business in a market where 44% of our exports go.
May may not have the same sort of mandate as she would have had she won a general election on her own manifesto, but there are other types of mandates and the referendum result is one. Sure, it was binary, but the state of the polls indicate that the public does not dislike her interpretation of it.
"Just me and my son. Safe in our nest. Away from you lot circling like vultures for scraps. Making this about you. Making this about color or a cause.
Look, I'd shout from the window, manic in my hatred. Look what you did. Look what you all did.
All of you - you pathetic people, you self-righteous liberals, you useless parents, you biased b*stards, you media pariahs, you prying fools - look what you did.
So now you are pray for me? Expecting me to believe there is a god. How dare you?
You are donating cash? What would you like me to spend it on? Money may assuage your guilt, shield you from your revulsion. But what dollar bill will make mend my son's head or heart.
I dont think.you can take much out of trumps pro brexit stance in that it was primarily motivated by politics and not some new doctrine of international relations.
Britain is not a.superpower but has a lot of influence hard and soft power. Disporoportionate to its size. This is what diplomats rightly fret about. It is diminishing with brexit.
We cannot yet say anything about what a Trump Presidency will be. It may not even be as disruptive as his campaign. But one area where we have good reason to be able to predict is foreign policy, and I am convinced it will end up being an almost complete break with past doctrines and received wisdom. Precisely what form it will take, I can't say just yet, but I think some key assumptions will be challenged and overturned.
As for what form it takes in Europe, I suggest studying Putin's 2001 speech to the Bundestag for clues as to what he really wants. The question is to what extent the EU is able to rise to the new reality created by a US that is taking a new approach.
Remainers keep throwing around the 44% of our exports are to the eu figure and it sounds big and scary as the implication they make is it will drop to zero.
However if memory serves don't exports as a total make up somewhere like a total of between 10 and 15 percent of our total trade with the rest being domestic?
If so that means even if it drops to zero which is highly questionable what we are really talking about is an effect on between 4.4% and 6.6% of our total trade?
@williamglen@MTimT Putin has said much over the years with a lot of substance (contrast with theresa may for instance) and his speeches are fascinating in a way. But the uk and us have actively sought to undermine his regime for a decade.or so and now there will be payback. He wants to neutralise the threat.to russia from the west to shore up his regime. This will mean weakening of nato, eu etc and the isolation/break up of the uk. In the scheme of things trump is a useful idiot and a hundred christmases in one for the russkies. Just my thoughts on the subject though.
@williamglen@MTimT Putin has said much over the years with a lot of substance (contrast with theresa may for instance) and his speeches are fascinating in a way. But the uk and us have actively sought to undermine his regime for a decade.or so and now there will be payback. He wants to neutralise the threat.to russia from the west to shore up his regime. This will mean weakening of nato, eu etc and the isolation/break up of the uk. In the scheme of things trump is a useful idiot and a hundred christmases in one for the russkies. Just my thoughts on the subject though.
Yes but given the UK is on the other side of Europe to Russia and the Baltic states who are right next to it is the latter who need UK military support post Brexit
"Just me and my son. Safe in our nest. Away from you lot circling like vultures for scraps. Making this about you. Making this about color or a cause.
Look, I'd shout from the window, manic in my hatred. Look what you did. Look what you all did.
All of you - you pathetic people, you self-righteous liberals, you useless parents, you biased b*stards, you media pariahs, you prying fools - look what you did.
So now you are pray for me? Expecting me to believe there is a god. How dare you?
You are donating cash? What would you like me to spend it on? Money may assuage your guilt, shield you from your revulsion. But what dollar bill will make mend my son's head or heart.
Comments
(I feel like I've inadvertently triggered AlsoIndigo's Brexit macro.)
61% of Greeks voted to reject the terms, and they ended up signing worse terms.
There are politicians who answer to electorates (28 of them, not the UK and EU) and there are decision makers and shareholders in individual businesses.
The latter will do whatever they think is right for their individual businesses and their bottom line.
All the politicians are doing is creating the framework that those decisions will be made within. They are not making the decisions.
That comparison has so many points of failure.
D-
(The D- is your score, not an attempt at an emoji).
The transformation into an army of europhile robots, similar to the Nats, will be complete once this lot have passed on.
Pauly is correct that the young are particularly vulnerable to being house trained to accept no alternative to particular social and economic policies.
Age should bring insight from experience.
As for Britain's soft power, I would argue that, at least in term of diplomacy, the development of the EU's own foreign service did huge damage to the UK's diplomacy. Sure, the UK's door to the EU (to paraphrase the Chinese) was in the asset column, but it came at considerable costs elsewhere to Britain's soft power.
"Just me and my son. Safe in our nest. Away from you lot circling like vultures for scraps. Making this about you. Making this about color or a cause.
Look, I'd shout from the window, manic in my hatred. Look what you did. Look what you all did.
All of you - you pathetic people, you self-righteous liberals, you useless parents, you biased b*stards, you media pariahs, you prying fools - look what you did.
So now you are pray for me? Expecting me to believe there is a god. How dare you?
You are donating cash? What would you like me to spend it on? Money may assuage your guilt, shield you from your revulsion. But what dollar bill will make mend my son's head or heart.
Get away, the lot of you.
You broke my son.
You broke my son."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4097970/If-mother-special-needs-teen-tortured-Facebook-live-wouldn-t-want-prayers-wouldn-t-want-cash-wouldn-t-want-apologies-d-just-want-son-whole.html
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21340
new one
However if memory serves don't exports as a total make up somewhere like a total of between 10 and 15 percent of our total trade with the rest being domestic?
If so that means even if it drops to zero which is highly questionable what we are really talking about is an effect on between 4.4% and 6.6% of our total trade?
Doesn't sound quite so scary to me
Putin has said much over the years with a lot of substance (contrast with theresa may for instance) and his speeches are fascinating in a way. But the uk and us have actively sought to undermine his regime for a decade.or so and now there will be payback. He wants to neutralise the threat.to russia from the west to shore up his regime. This will mean weakening of nato, eu etc and the isolation/break up of the uk. In the scheme of things trump is a useful idiot and a hundred christmases in one for the russkies. Just my thoughts on the subject though.