Widescreen and PP , I certainly share your views about the self inflicted disaster we currently face (tho it appears the City isnt as badlye ffected as 'proper' indesutries . My comment about size was that it is relaly ahrd for a small country in global terms despite qa moderate popualtion size will sruggle up agains t the USA and China and the Eu. Debatebly one could add india to this list as its military is probably bigger than the UK with Brasil and Indonesia soon to follow.
These kinds of CEOs are the commercial world equivalent of Trump (who of course has a foot in both camps) johnson , Putin, Erdogan , Bolsanaro .. They all play the same game adapted to the style and circumstance of their countries . it looks to me like he is just there to be a hatchet man. He is from outside aviation although he was senior figure at BP and the Chair has no knowledge of anyhting technically complex . Same ol' mantra, shareholder value, delivering, driving etc ... All comes down to one thing mass redundancies and scaling back investment to bump up the short term while another genuinely world scale UK entity slides into history.