Germany, France seek UK part in increasing European security

I do not no. Russian army is in tatters, if and when the Ukraine war ends things will be even worse. Their economy is also failing due to the massive loss of Russians in the war and the sanctions. Russia won’t be conventional war a threat to anyone in decades, if ever again.

Look at things today, the average recruit into their army is now in their 50s as they have run out of people younger to join. Their massive cold war stores of equipment are going to be empty in around a year and they arent making much new stuff. They have a serious problem that won’t be economical to solve.

With trump they might eventually win the war but it will be at massive cost.

I’m going to disagree. The average Russian peasant is hurting with sanctions, loss of monetary value and relatively high inflation but the Russian economy is proving resilient as Russia has just switched it’s hydrocarbon exports to China, North Korea and India. Who are all delighted to have cheap oil and gas imports in exchange for military hardware and to a lesser extent consumer goods.
Russia has switched to a war economy. So they are producing 40+ T90M tanks a month, hardly impressive considering the huge losses but enough over a year once the war in Ukraine ends to pad out their army.They are Aldo mass producing artillery rounds and reportedly able to produce 1.5-2 million 152mm (their standard SPG and field artillery round) a year as well as dumb rockets, mortars and small arms. None of these are smart munitions really
On the smart munitions front Russia is known to be producing around 50-100 cruise missiles of Kalibre or Kinzhal varieties a month. Not that these munitions are particularly smart as their accuracy is somewhere between 20 metres and 2 miles.
Glide bombs have proven useful to Russia and they are converting hundreds of dumb iron bombs a month to the glide variety enabling their frankly useless Sukhoi Su34s to stand off by around 40 miles and reduce risks to the airframes. At last estimate 37 of the 135 SU34s available have been shot down over Ukraine, putting a significant dent on Russia’s air forces ability to prosecute strike missions in a contested environment.
It is the complex platforms like attack helicopters, fighter and strike aircraft Russia is struggling to produce with many analyst stating China will step in and sell these platforms to Russia at the earliest possible opportunity. Once the war in Ukraine is finished President Xi will simply state there is no longer a need for sanctions and ignore the West, especially if China’s export based economy is hit by huge tariffs by the incoming Trump presidency.

Aren’t most of them t90s being built actually rebuilds from tanks that have been damaged?

Their economy isn’t doing so well currently. Inflation is sky rocketing and so are interest rates. For sure the economic sanctions haven’t hit their economy as much as the west would like to believe but they are biting.

Agreed it’s only the poor that are dying on the front but equally they are the ones that are needed for a future war and there is only so many of them and the more that are sent home in body bags or physically a mess the less new recurits want to join up. Plus them poor people are also the ones that ultimately keep the economy going through manual labour jobs.

Russia just can’t sustain these losses and expect to come out the other side as a serious threat to anyone.

Not quite. Russia has been taking old and damaged T72s and T80s back through a modernization and reconditioning program. Bearing mind that Russia had nearly 10,000 sitting around waiting for WW3. Though judging by the Oryx site’s numbers, Russia have burned through a lot of these spares already.

The T72/80 program is about the same rate as the new build and reconditioning/modified T90s.

One question that needs to be answered is, where are Russia getting the electronics for the T90s. This was previously provided by France. Who late last year finally turned off the support. I suspect this is now being provided by China.

I’m wondering how accurate those t90 data is as everything coming out of Russia needs to be taken with a massive pinch of salt.

The reason i question it is Russia isn’t using t90s on the front line in any number. If they were building them at that rate you would expect to see them more often.

I read annual production of 40 (although there is some questions on how many of them 40 are new and how many are upgrades/repairs to existing ones) and 100 lost so far, so they are being destroyed almost as fast as they are being built.

Believe you have read the tea leaves re the future relationship between the ChiComs and Orcs very well. 👍👍

They have probably used c. 40-50% of their 15,000 reserve tanks, which they are refurbishing at approximately 200-250 hulls a month (all types from T-54 to T-80), as well as building c. 30 new (T-90s) a month.

Without the attrition of the invasion of Ukraine, they would be producing 3000-3500 working tanks each year, Of which c. 200 would be T-90s & a further 2-300 would be latest model T-72s. That assumes that they don’t expand production of new models even further (which they doubtless will). Likewise they will step up production of APCs & IFVs

If they beat Ukraine, then you can add Ukrainian industrial capacity to their armour building capability & conscript/ slave troops to their infantry numbers

They also will consolidate their hold on Moldova & Georgia, at the very least.

Not sure on those t90 build rates, I read the US thinks they are maybe making early 20s a year not month. Some sources indicate upto 80 a year.

Also don’t forget that most of the remaining tanks in storage are in such bad state that they are only useful for spares.

Russia can’t build tanks to keep up with the rate it’s losing them. Currently losing around 100 tanks a month according to Oryx

Hardly. Russia can’t take on Ukraine it would get it’s arse handed to it if it tried against nato with or without the US and would need to get through 5 or 6 countries before it threatened the uk. It’s not a realistic threat to nato.

I accept that Ukraine at this point is better armed than any single European country or probably multiple European countries but taking on nato Russia risks war with many European countries and also with the risk of the US getting involved.

Since you guys got this, it’s cool if the US totally pulls out now then right? Would save a ton of money.

Save who loads of money?

The US is in Europe for trade reasons, it has vested interest in Europe relying on it as it helps when agreeing trade deals. If the US pulled out Europe would be in a far strong negotiation position.

No oil….North Sea has plenty we just don’t want to extract it!

The North Sea is tiny compared to anything North America has and at sea extraction is always going to be expensive.

There’s 3.2 Terawatts of wind just in the UK’s North sea waters. That’s twice what all of Europe consumes. And it never EVER stops blowing.

It pretty much has at the moment & has been that way for the last week. Its forecast to stay that way for another week.

At the moment of writing, wind is providing 5%, solar 0.6%, hydro 0.9%, biomass 7.1% & nuclear 14.4% for a total of 28% from “renewables”

Gas is 53.1% & imports at 17.9% – so 81%

The other 1% comes form “other” sources

It’s already been noted that, by driving farmers off their farms using IHT, more agricultural land will become available to build solar farms & that people will have to become “more flexible” in their electricity usage(I.e. use it when it’s available)

Power cuts are such fun!

Yes, infrastructure investments are expensive and there will be varying degrees of economic efficiency associated w/ said investments. The intended point of post was a contention that US has begun the process of rectifying previous underinvestment in infrastructure.

!? do you even think what you wrote?

can u understand what you write?

Can write be US know?

Many poor americans don’t even appear in the statistics – they have no hope of affording medical treatment & never even seek medical help, as the costs would destroy their families.

Even amongst those that have insurance, once the lifetime limit is exceeded, they are on their own.

It’s estimated that approximately 60% of personal bankruptcies (around 550,000 households per annum) in the USA are because of medical costs

I think you guys are totally clueless about American healthcare. People in the US who can’t afford it show up and get it anyways. It’s illegal to be turned away from a hospital in the USA. The bills pile up, the person says they can’t pay and the hospital eats the loss.

People don’t sit and wait to die at home. You guys are clueless.

superb if you are lucky enough to have a private health plan. millions dont

It’s around 4-5 times the UK amount per capita.

The American health system is grossly inefficient. It’s noted to deliver very little “bang for bucks” with the insurance based schemes being milked as cash cows by the hospitals and primary care systems for as much as they can get.
So if you are an inpatient in an American hospital you will be referred to every possible specialist for an opinion and receive huge numbers of complex scans, blood tests and anything else they can think of the charge to the patient’s insurance scheme.
That isn’t an efficient system as it does not lead to improved care. Overly complicated care yes but not improved.
The NHS does deliver bang for bucks but needs reform. The numbers of managers, operational or flow team members and tier after tier of senior management is frankly ridiculous. Then there are the “none jobs” eg people being paid large salaries for delivering absolutely nothing but leftist woke policies. A colleague of mine has just secured a very well paid job being a care coordinator for non binary and gender reassignment people. This sets those groups apart from all other NHS patients as they have now tier after tier of people lobbying for their “rights/access and more worrying conditions for care to be delivered.”
Eg they are going to get preferential treatment.

The average american sees a dentist more often in a year than the UK resident sees in their life.

There was a famous Time Magazine expose on US health care some years ago. We could finance the entire NHS budget out of the fraud in the US medical industry.

The US spends more on providing publicly funded health care (through medicare, medicaid & the veterans program) to a smaller number of people than the NHS

If you took out the insurance based admin costs, excessive drugs profits (through not allowing price negotiatiation at States & HMO level), the US would save huge amounts on medical costs (but, of course, medical insurance & drug manufacturing profits would fall massively, along with their contributions to senator’s and congressmen’s re-election budgets)

As an American friend once commented to me “there is only one subject on which EVERY senator & congressman is an expert – campaign finance”

bad healthcare outcomes, while people in the UK wait half a year to see a specialist. You guys are drunk on the koolaide

To be fair so do we now. The NHS is now massively more expensive than European equivalent because almost all of its services have been privatised, effectively turning it into the US system on stealth. It also is not longer internationally considered the gold standard of health care it was a decade or so ago.

The UK GP surgery is effectively a franchise, it has been for a long time. That is “out-sourcing” or privatisation.
Apparently we do not pay for health care at the point of delivery – try the dentist!

Not a franchise, but a contractor. Most people don’t realise the nhs is not a monolith state provider it’s a system made up of around 50,000 different organisations, with a contract to provide care, the huge majority of these are private owned business’s and have always been private business. It was only the hospitals that were nationalised. GP practices, dental practices, pharmacy, optometrist have always been private business..

What changed is the last goverment put a requirement in for hospitals and the whole NHS to prioritise private services over in house where there was an option. Now almost all hospital services are run by private companies.

No there was never a requirement to prioritise private services over in house services.

different foundation trusts structure their support services as they so wish. Many moved to private contractors for support services such as catering as a way to cut cost..if your in house catering cost xxx pounds and you contract out for xx you have an instant saving. The issue is quality tended to suffer so many brought the services back in when it was realised poor catering leads to increased length of stays for patients and unhappy staff. But hospitals choose how their own support services are run. The three most common models are:

1) the NHS trust runs the service and directly employs the staff
2) the NHS trust creates and owns a limited company and then employs staff via that limited company to run its support services.
3) the nhs trust contracts out its support services via open procurement.

at present 2 is the growing model as it allows the trust to keep tight control as the company share holder, but does not have to employ staff on NHS terms and conditions..it can employ its catering and support staff on minimum wage or the market rate for unskilled/semi skilled individuals in that area. It also allow them to go off and win other service contracts and make profits doing random things as well as raise investment finances..in ways they are not allowed to do as an NHS trust ( a limited company can take more risk a hospital trust which cannot ever be allowed to go bankrupt is not allowed to play the risk game).

I ( as an expert who has worked in, monitored and developed many health services and systems) have no issue with private sector involvement in healthcare as long as it’s part of a well controlled appropriately funded system. The problem with the US system is that it’s not controlled and is market lead..which you cannot allow in a health system, the problem with the UK system is that it’s been chronically underfunded for 75 years and the British public have been only paying 75% of the required bill..so we have a system trying to run that is missing a goos few hundred billion pounds in payments for services already rendered.

GP Surgeries have been private partnerships since the start of the NHS. Bevan wanted to nationalise the lot, but the medical profession refused to go along with it.

Likewise, the resistance to dentists being part of the NHS comes from the Dentists, not the Government

Hi Steve, no the UK system is underfunded compared to European comparable systems. Per person costs ( rounded )

UK £3000
Germany £5000
France £4000

Systems like Spain and the Eastern European systems cannot be compared as they have massive holes in things they don’t do ( in Spain there is no one to provide care in a hospital, so you must at all times have a relative with you to wash, feed, turn and provide care.. the hospital just provides medical interventions)

The NHS has always been a mainly private system. It’s never been some state owned monolith. It was only ever the hospitals that were moved to state ownership. GP practices, pharmacists, out of hours services, optometrists, dental practices these have always been private providers with an NHS contract.

Yeah, cause waiting half a year to see a specialist isn’t getting shafted.

The average US health insurance cost is less than $200 a month, and you can walk into a specialists office without a referral. This website is an echo chamber of poorly informed people finding statistics to back up their straw man arguments.

Chris the average for a family of 4 is 20-25 dollars a year and it goes up as you get older… you can pretend all you want but it’s an indispensable fact that the US spends around 4.5 trillion dollars a year on healthcare or Germany with its 560 billion euros to the UKs 160-170 billion pounds… money talks you pay for shite you get shite….if you think you can get good healthcare for 200 dollars a month for your lifetime you truly have no idea what it costs .

Just as an example a quote for a 60 year old single man in the us for cover is 800-1200 dollars a month and it goes up the older you get..and they font cover any existing conditions..you also have to cover co-payments..which equate to thousands of dollars if you become ill and will ramp up your payments for every long term conditions you get….

I do know what I’m talking about I’ve worked in healthcare development and oversight all my working life, I’ve even worked with US providers..who very often would come to the UK to get ideas on cost saving.

Good question, and the answer is both.
Per capita, the US government pays more for healthcare than most European nations (I think Norway and Switzerland pay more, and possibly a couple more); on top of that, the US public also pays into their private health insurance in obscene amounts.
When it comes to healthcare, the US really does pay an incredible amount, for outcomes that aren’t significantly better than the UK or other European nations- unless you’re really very rich.

Do you think Trump will force Zelensky into signing a terrible peace treaty with Russia, just by withholding military aid?

A dangerous Russia; a protectionist U.S.and a mostly disorganised Europe. Isn’t the world just great.

The S2’s range (over 3,000 km) meant it could strike Moscow.

The primary use of these missiles was to prevent any invasion from the USSR, not to strike the whole of the USSR, and yes, one of the plans was to nuke the border between East Germany and Poland.

It was much more expensive at the time to have a missile with a range of 10,000 km and useless.

The law is meaningless, the Supreme Court can and will strike it down.

Yes, though, if NATO starts to look like an alliance on paper, without the full political involvement it implies… Things will start quickly to fall apart, where nations most threatened by Russia starting to evaluate options. It is already at play. Look at how Hungary or Poland think mid voice to take some regions of Ukraine if things go sour.
We have work to do together to prevent this.

The reason Europe doesn’t have nuclear weapons is primarily that the US has prevented their acquisition through the NPT.

They have done this in part through duel code weapons.

Europe could very easily acquire tactical nuclear weapons if it chose.

And if it made that choice how long will it take? Years then more years to get them qualified on airframes and that’s the easy route! And if we wanted them on the only stealthy airframe in play, we’d need the US to certify these new weapon for the F35.

The only easy way is to buy them from the US if they would sell them so logically is just better to have US tactical weapons on Europe’s soil and use certified airframes like the F35 to deploy them. Hence the current arrngement.

Believe there are a “substantial” number of dual control, B61-12s deployed across multiple NATO airbases, but you are correct, the Russian inventory of tactical nukes vastly exceeds the NATO inventory. However, that may not remain the case indefinitely. RN SSN-As, as well as USN Virginia class boats, may deploy w/ SLCM-N (Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear), from the mid-2030s (on the Virginia class) and early-2040s on SSN-A class.

Yes we flippantly dismiss the importance of tactical nukes as keeping the balance. Most are taking Ukraine as the benchmark for how a European war would pan out, its not.

A Chinese invasion of Hawaii wouldn’t trigger Article V, it’s very specific in it’s language as to what kind of attack would require NATO to be mobilised.

Are you serious? In 1990 the US Army defeated the 5th largest standing army in the world (Iraqi Army). European involvement was token in size.

So effectively Europe doesn’t have a like for like response more of a escalation not far off a strategic strikes, I would assume to wipe out 60 of Russia’s industrial capacity that would mean carrier strike as Russia a big place. The question is would Europe want to go that route effective MAD or go to the negotiating table knowing if they don’t agree they walk way its MAD. Russia doctrine is escalate to deescalate and it actually strengthens their hand knowing that the only military response is for enemy to go up to the final level and destroy themselves with it.

I don’t get you point. The ability to escalate is ours. Russia can do whatever they want with their nukes. So do we. They threaten, we don’t bulge. They fire, only us are able to say how we respond to it, not Russia. So I really don’t get your point. Nuke is not a toy. It is mad.
Second point: if we fire from a Rafale, why the need of the Fanu. We will have to convey the Raid of last warning. And after, it either go full blown or not, depending of enemy reaction. They don’t have the option of firing tactical nukes here and there. This does not exist if we don’t want it to exist.
By the way, exact numbers of operational warheads in Russia is said to be far lower than 2000. Operational warhead don’t remain operational forever. You need to do some maintenance.

Remember that all the sane conservatives who where in his government have turned their back on him and he’s now got the Christian Nationalist Demagogue nutters behind him instead. I don’t think Trumps first term is any reliable indicator of his second one.

Absolutely certain The Donald will indeed harangue ENATO re rates of defence expenditure. Less certain re future private geopolitical accords w/ Mad Vlad. US support for Ukraine will be withdrawn, resulting ultimately in unequal/compromised negotiations w/ RU. Anticipate a ceasefire that creates a new defacto border along the then current line of contact. RU will remain on a wartime footing indefinitely. RU military will require a period of time for recovery/refit. After that period, Vlad will embark on a campaign for further acquisitions, including: Georgia, Moldova, possibly Azerbaijan and some/all of the ‘stans. Ultimately, Vlad will cast an acquisitive eye upon the Baltics, whereupon life w/in Europe will become quite interesting. Meanwhile, the ChiComs will be embarking on a course of mischief both w/in and beyond the SCS. At some point during this timeline, the Iranians will decide to create real havoc in the ME, and the DPRK will attempt to annex SK. There will essentially be more snapping alligators in the swamp than the US can possibly deal w/, using conventional arms. Fortunately, the Donald (or successors) will have ramped up production of both nukes and delivery systems. After a brief, but spectacular, aerial light show, a quiet period will reign in the NH and a significant portion of the SH, for an extended timeframe. Decade(s), perhaps longer. 🤔😳

Bollox !!! You’ve had your election, the choice was war or peace, peace won. 😉♥️✌️

Is Europe helping America? I don’t think so.

It’s noting about being nieve it’s about international trade and tariffs. The last government wanted to hide the impact of brexit and so didn’t apply controls on imports and so lost huge amount of tax revenue and equally gave the EU no incentive to want a better deal as they have checks on our goods but we don’t in reverse. If we apply controls then the impact will be felt both ways and deals can be done.

Also the EU and a number of members have already indicated they want a better deal on various things that would benefit them, which means we have a chance to get improvements in reverse.

It’s international trade deals 101. There is a reason deals take decades to do.

Political will. That’s all any trade deal, or any deal for that matter, is down to. 8 years ago there was no political will on the part of the EU for any sort of deal. Thanks to Putin and now Trump, the political will is changing. Having a nuclear armed tyrant illegally invading another country and an unpredictable US president refocuses the mind somewhat. Look at the German economy. Bang in trouble. The EU believed we needed them more than they needed us. After the US we are the next biggest player on the pitch, along with France. And now they need us more than we need them.

Trade deals take time. The EU economy and buying power dwarfs the uk giving us a difficult trading hand. But we had a goverment that wanted it done quickly. These two things could never be aligned.

We still have things the EU want but it will take time to trade them for stuff we want.

Sorry I don’t understand. What do you mean that your not sure where this discussion is heading?

Whatever your views on the rights and wrongs behind BREXIT the Tories and the political establishment well and truly wrecked any chance of a sensible deal. Instead of accepting the vote we were faced with a pathetic array of stalling tactics in Parliament in which our current PM willingly participated. May’s initial agreement was not thought through and to an extent tied the hands of Johnson’s Government.
We shouldn’t forget we ended up with the hard BREXIT deal because May couldn’t get a softer version through Parliament largely because of Remainers. How many votes was it?
Our political class acted disgracefully during this period and for someone who had become a reluctant leaver I won’t forget the actions of the so called elite.

Have you actually read May’s deal? If is an almost carbon copy of boris deal. It was all smoke and mirrors on boris getting this massive improvement.

You haven’t read what I said properly because we are saying the same thing but let’s not forget a softer Brexit could have been achieved but was scuppered by the Labour Party putting politics before country and not backing May in a series of votes.
That the EU took a tough line was no surprise in light of the obvious weakness of our Government and the divisions within the political class that they quite rightly exploited. It would have been a different situation if the UK presented a more united position, which ironically would have been better for both parties economically.
Personally, I would have used our strength in defence and security to negotiate a better deal being prepared to play hardball behind close doors instead of the pathetic media charade that we witnessed.

How did Labour have anything to do with it. The Conservatives has a 90 odd seat majority in the commons and a majority in the Lords, it was fully in their hands.

Agreed we had a weak goverment but that was fully the Conservatives fault. They could have played a hard hand and haggled better but they were too focused on getting out at any cost, no matter how badly it left the country.

Go back and read what happened during the May premiership when she lost 3 votes (she did not have a majority) because Labour, the SNP and LD’s failed to support her softer Brexit proposals. The remainers helped the hard brexiteers bring down her government.
Of course the Tories were at fault but let’s not forget they were given a hand to create the mess.

Torries had a house of commons majority at the time and relying on the opposition and blaming them is nonsense. It’s not their job to support the goverment it’s there’s to challenge it.

She then throw away her majority leading to boris.

May did not have a majority at the time she lost 3 votes on the Withdrawal Agreement. Before the last vote there were cross party talks to try and get support to get a deal through. It is on the public record.
There have been numerous times during crisis when parties vote in the national interest and not along narrow party lines.
In reality Labour were also divided on Brexit although certainly not as bad as the Tories.
BTW I am not a Tory or Labour voter so I couldn’t care less but that’s what happened.

Fair, but if all Conservative PM voted for it, it would have passed. It was and is a terrible deal though, and our country has been hit hard ever since.

Whether we could have had a better deal we will never know but you can’t negotiate anything successfully if the other party can see your incompetent and disunited.

Not true, no country is ever 100% unified polictically and yet trade deals get signed every year. Trade deals are all about what each side has to offer the other and how valuable that it to them. Assuming you don’t have an Australia scenario where they saw us coming and knew we we were in a hurry for daily mail/express news stories and gave them everything they wanted and some.

If you negotiate with France and US you can bet your house that whatever the political colour they will push hard for similar outcomes because external facing their political class will work hard in their own national interest.
Ultimately with Brexit the EU, indeed everyone was aware at least half our MPs were against it along with most of the senior civil servants.
The withdrawal negotiations were rushed and poorly thought through.
It will be interesting to see the U.K.’s approach to the TCA review in 2026. Hopefully we will see a general cross party consensus on what we would like to do but personally I would just like us to show we are honest and competent again with some low key agreements that build confidence.
Beyond that who knows but personally I don’t like the EU and what it stands for because it is locked into an original agreement that reflected a post war world that no longer exists.
It is presiding over its share of GDP significantly diminishing in the world and in virtual all measures of performance is outstripped by the more dynamic US economy.
Yes we want to trade with the EU and if these arrangements can be improved great but we don’t need to be tied to an institution that is itself protectionist. There is a far bigger world out there and to be fair to Starmer he has mentioned for example and contrary to many the importance of the Indo Pacific to the U.K.
This all takes time but narrow arguments about our relationship with the EU misses the point and we need to have a greater vision than shall we join a customs union or single market, which will reopen still sore wounds.
Anyway just my opinion.

Cross party agreement isn’t needed, as labour has a majority and the Conservatives passed a law that stated trade deals didn’t need to to parliament anyway. There will never be cross party agreement on this as a lot of conservative pm are reform / brexit party members in hiding wanting a hard brexit still.

Of course the EU and it’s member states will want their own self interest but equally so do we that is always the case with trade deals. Boris wanted to raced through at what ever cost to the nation and he lied behind the scenes telling his PMs what they wanted to hear including that we wouldn’t follow the deal anyway.

This time we have grown ups in charge, so just a question of working out what the EU wants, as we have already given them pretty much everything they wanted and clearly they are not going to agree to a worse deal for them as they already have the current one.

Sunak manged to negotiate with the Windsor framework so there is still hope of room for improvements.

As for having the grown ups in charge this time, well time will tell and comparing to the Johnson Government is a very low bar. We already have seen enough sleeve under this Government to suggest things could get interesting in the coming years. I hope they prove to be a huge success.
There certainly isn’t a need for cross party agreement for minor changes to our relationship with the EU but to do anything more fundamental does unless you want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Our whole relationship from joining the EC through to our leaving was built on lies from both sides of the argument. This could have been overcome and I personally think we would have have stayed in if the significant changes such as Maastricht and Lisbon had been subject to referendums in the U.K. Instead we saw the incumbent Government of the day fundamentally change our relationship with the Europe because they had a majority at the time.
Both parties did it and it was a huge mistake that led to the rise of UKIP whatever you or I think.
Always good to debate these things

Frankly Brexit whether we like it or not has harmed our security as well as our economy, both are linked of course but it could have been less damaging for security if more effort had been put in.

Much of the blame lies with The clueless Boris Johnson government but clearly the EU were responsible for some of it and that needs pointing out to them now….

How exactly has leaving the EU harmed our security?

I know precisely what you mean, heard they spent 800million getting planning permissions for another thames crossing, 800 million and not one spade full of earth moved, we are run by people whose whole purpose in life is to enrich themselves, sadly it doesnt matter whether it is a blue or red rosette.