Eurosceptics Pour Scorn on Obama's Warning against Brexit
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Senior Eurosceptic Conservatives dismissed Barack Obama’s suggestion that Britain would be “at the back of the queue” in negotiations for a US trade agreement if it left the European Union.
Cabinet ministers accused the “lame duck” US president of making meaningless threats to blackmail the British people into voting to remain in Europe. Others pointed out that Europe and the US had never struck a free trade agreement anyway, and claimed Obama was being manipulated by Downing Street.
Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons, said: “We should not give up our independence just because of what President Obama said.”
The intervention by Obama delighted the remain camp, but has left the leave campaign furious. “Barack Obama was doing an old friend a political favour,” said the justice minister Dominic Raab, referring to David Cameron.
“You can’t say on the one hand that the US-UK special relationship is as strong as ever and always will be, and in the next breath say ‘take my advice or you go to the back of the queue’. I don’t think the British people will be blackmailed by anyone, let alone a lame duck US president on his way out.”
Raab’s stance was echoed by the Tory former defense secretary Liam Fox, who said Obama’s views would be irrelevant after the US presidential election, the Guardian reported.
“We have a referendum at the end of June, presidential elections are in November, so whoever it is that will be at the helm of the United States, it won’t be Barack Obama. So, to an extent, whatever he says today is largely irrelevant,” he said. “It will be the next president, and the next Congress, who will be in charge of any trade arrangements.”
The energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, said: “The simple truth is that for years, the US and EU have failed to get a free trade deal organized. So the threat to the UK is meaningless from a president who has not delivered even for those who aren’t ‘at the back of the queue’.”
On Friday, Obama used a press conference with the prime minister at the Foreign Office to explain why he had the “temerity to weigh in” on the EU referendum debate.
“Particularly because my understanding is that some of the folks on the other [leave] side have been ascribing to the United States certain actions we will take if the UK does leave the EU – they say for example that ‘we will just cut our own trade deals with the United States’,” he said.
“So they are voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do. I figured you might want to hear from the president of the United States what I think the United States is going to do.
