US President Barack Obama warns Brexit would leave Britain at ‘back of the queue’ when negotiating trade deals
Obama said international cooperation through institutions such as the EU was good for security and the global economy.
President Barack Obama said Britain would be at “the back of the queue” to negotiate a trade agreement with the US if it votes to leave the European Union, in a direct assault on the arguments of those who say the UK could win better deals outside the bloc.
“Some of the folks on the other side have been ascribing to the United States certain actions we will take if the UK does leave the EU,” Obama said at a joint press conference in London on Friday with Prime Minister David Cameron. “For example, that, well, we’ll just cut our own trade deals [with the US]. Maybe at some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
Maybe at some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon
The intervention is a boost to Cameron as he fights to keep Britain inside the 28-nation EU, with the use of the British word “queue” rather than the more American “line” suggesting the White House may have coordinated on the language.
The emphasis on trading isolation closed a week that began with a warning from the UK Treasury that a so-called Brexit would cause decades of economic damage.
While campaigners to get Britain out of the EU had begun the week arguing that the words of a foreign leader would make no difference to British voters, their reaction by Friday suggested concern. London Mayor Boris Johnson wrote in The Sun newspaper that Obama’s intervention was “downright hypocritical”. He suggested the “part-Kenyan” president might dislike Britain’s imperial legacy.
The point was taken up by Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, which advocates Brexit. “Look, I know his family’s background,” Farage told The Guardian. “Kenya. Colonialism. There is clearly something going on there. It’s just that you know people emerge from colonialism with different views of the British. Some thought that they were really rather benign and rather good, and others saw them as foreign invaders. Obama’s family come from that second school of thought and it hasn’t quite left him yet.”
