{"id":617440,"date":"2025-12-07T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T07:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/617440\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T07:05:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T07:05:18","slug":"the-observer-view-putin-is-laughing-at-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/617440\/","title":{"rendered":"The Observer view: Putin is laughing at Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p role=\"text\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"is_Paragraph font_caslonIonic _dsp-inline _bxs-border-box _ww-break-word _mt-0px _mr-0px _mb-0px _ml-0px _ff-f-family _fw-f-weight-3048 _fs-f-size-18 _lh-f-lineHeigh3500605 _col-c-grey_600 _select-auto _ws-normal\">Much of this is echo chamber noise, but it is true that Europe\u2019s self-confidence has taken a knock. That was Brexit, sold on false pretences and acting like a tourniquet on EU-UK trade. The damage done by Brexit to UK growth, investment, employment and productivity is impossible to ignore, but it has damaged Europe, too. London was Europe\u2019s New York. Britain championed its single market. Successive British commissioners were constructive voices for freer trade and less bureaucracy. The EU needs voices like that now. Even more, it needs to mount a life-or-death defence of liberal democratic values under siege from east and west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much of this is echo chamber noise, but it is true that Europe\u2019s self-confidence has taken a knock.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[802,32,1700,2000,299,5187,1699,332,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-617440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115677018421483070","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}