US and UK to now furnish Australia with nuclear submarines.

40 years?

I give it less than that.

Perfidious Albion indeed!

And how, exactly, does Johnson's behaviour contribute towards the achievement of this end?

He should look at how the grownups are trying to handle this situation, and learn from them. Or, at the very least, he should shut up and let the grownups handle this. But, as I say, there's a cheap tabloid headline to be had here, and we know Johnson too well to hope that he can look beyond that.

Keep deflecting, Aegir. The issue is Johnson's behaviour; you repeatedly try to turn the discussion to Macron's behaviour. I think I know why.

You'd think that, before Johnson reacts to the withdrawal of ambassadors from Washington and Canberra, it might cross his mind to look at how Washington and Canberra are reacting, and to wonder "if I do my usual back-end-of-a-pantomime-horse routine on this, could that possibly annoy Washington and Canberra, who are evidently trying to mend fences with Paris?"

Well, actually, knowing Johnson as we do, we could confidently predict that it wouldn't cross his mind to ask himself this question. But acknowledging that we all know that Johnson is a complete arsewit isn't much of a defence of Johnson.

Perhaps Johnson was pissed at the evaluation of the UK's status and influence implicit in France's decision not to recall its ambassador from London, as well as Washington and Canberra, and he hoped by acting the clown to provoke France into doing so? Nah, that would be overthinking it. He did this because it gets tabloid headlines that gratifies the base. It would never cross his mind to wonder how it might play in Parish, Washington or Canberra.

But let's line Putin's pockets and build a pipeline with him. Cut off gas and electric to one of the founders of NATO which has been protecting Europe for the last 70 years, and people wonder why EU countries were left out of AUKUS.

Well, these days he's certainly better at getting things out of the US than the UK is.

I don't think UK is a "side show" or not responsible for or important in what happened here. Would just throw it out there that maybe the French are expecting that sort of behaviour now (??).

I suppose you'd call it an(other) extremely competitive/'frenemy' action - not quite hostile but edging close from the UK govt. It's disappointing I'm sure, but should be no great shock and continues a possibly inevitable downward trend of UK-French relations post Brexit.

It will probably spill over into the UK-French military cooperation eventually. I'd imagine stuff like that will be the very last to get burned up on the altar of "Brexit" as all it works through the system and the new reality comes into focus and most painful to have to reduce (for both sides).

I'm not getting your point. What have I said that was badly wrong? I actually agreed with you.

UK was a key part of this (you said that, disagreeing with another poster). 

It benefits directly in several ways, some of it at French expense (again you pointed that one out as well - see below quote)

You can't have it both ways, where UK was at once a key part of all this strategy & secret manouvering and then also intended no real harm to France. Not quite hostile but definitely very, very competitive & some sharp practice involved.

As to connections back to "Brexit", I'm not sure how that can be denied? The UK published a raft of documents about how it's intending to reposition itself in the world post Brexit and we've the UK government statements about it also ("Global Britain" using one of the slogans) and "AUKUS" idea fits in very well with that. I may be wrong, but would all be much harder if UK were still an EU member I think.

I think you've identified the direction of travel pretty well here and I think it will ultimately end with a NATO split, with European nations forming their own defence pact outside of NATO, and the Anglosphere forming their own alliance. Ireland, I would assume will sit it out, despite pressure from both sides, particularly Europe, to pick one.