Obama warns against UK Brexit as eurosceptics explode in fury
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US President Barack Obama plunged into Britain’s increasingly poisonous EU debate yesterday with a powerful warning against Brexit, arguing that US soldiers had laid down their lives for Europe.
Obama’s rare foray into the domestic politics of another country comes ahead of Britain’s EU membership referendum in June and drew a furious response from eurosceptics like London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, a traditional bastion of euroscepticism, Obama argued that Britain’s place in the European Union magnified its global influence and invoked the memory of US troops who died in two world wars.
“I realize that there’s been considerable speculation — and some controversy — about the timing of my visit,” he wrote in a piece published at the start of his four-day trip to Britain.
“I will say, with the candor of a friend, that the outcome of your decision is a matter of deep interest to the United States.
“Tens of thousands of Americans who rest in Europe’s cemeteries are a silent testament to just how intertwined our prosperity and security truly are.
“And the path you choose now will echo in the prospects of today’s generation of Americans.”
Johnson, the leading face of the eurosceptic campaign, said it was “downright hypocritical” of the US to intervene as it would not accept the same limits on its own sovereignty as European Union members do.
“For the United States to tell us in the UK that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy is a breathtaking example of the principle of do as I say, not as I do,” Johnson wrote in The Sun tabloid.
Johnson also repeated claims that “part-Kenyan” Obama may have removed a statue of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office at the start of his first term out of “ancestral dislike of the British Empire.”
The White House has previously rejected the allegation over the bust of the British wartime leader as “completely false.”
Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokeswoman also dismissed it yesterday, saying: “Let’s focus on facts.”
Asked about the controversy at a campaign event, anti-EU UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage told AFP: “Obama doesn’t like the British very much. His grandfather grew up in Kenya, a former British colony. He’s still got some bad feelings about that.”
He added: “I would rather he butted out and wasn’t here saying what he’s saying... We don’t need his advice.”
The issue of Brexit is likely to surface again at talks with Cameron later yesterday, to be followed by a press conference.
Ahead of the meeting, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama had lunch at Windsor Castle with Queen Elizabeth II, who turned 90 on Thursday, and her husband Prince Philip.
Richard Whitman, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent, said Obama’s was “an unusually personal intervention.”
“He’s making a very strong appeal from the heart,” he said.
“It will be difficult to say from the polls whether his intervention made a significant difference but I think that it creates a narrative which appears to be favouring the ‘Remain’ campaign.”
A poll by Sky News television found 57 percent said Obama’s intervention would make “no difference” to their vote.
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