EI-RB; I think it is very easy to do a postmortum on what went wrong or what the state of play at LGW is, I think everyone was in agreement that EI needed to expand and open additional bases. As you advise that they were 'clowns', where else in the UK would you deem to have been a better choice?
LGW was a panic measure so as to be seen to do something in face of a potential takeover.
Rather than deal with the issues that were already evident in a cost base way too high for a pseudo LCC they chucked money on badly thought expansion.
Figuring they could go up against Easyjet and win was a folly because they assummed that they competed with FR at Dub where reality is something different.
The tinkering and inability to decide what they are means that any strategy just gets doomed to failure as people don't believe they will pursue it to the end.
The tie up with Aer Arran has shades of do they really know what they are doing or is it yet another jump at being seen to do something.