President Obama arrives Thursday in London, where he may find himself at the center of a very British controversy. The U.S. president has become an unlikely player in Britain’s passionate “Brexit” debate – with his views even earning him the title “most anti-British American president there has ever been,” coined by a well-known politician.
For the uninitiated, “Brexit” is the catchy portmanteau used to refer to Britain’s potential exit from the European Union. After years of growing public dissent over the country’s E.U. membership, Britain is set to have a referendum this summer on whether to remain part of the E.U. If a majority of Brits vote to “leave” the E.U., Britain will exit the bloc.
Exactly what happens after that isn’t clear, but Obama evidently doesn’t want to see it happen.
Last year, he told the BBC that he supports Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign for Britain to remain in the E.U., adding that the membership gave Washington greater confidence in the transatlantic alliance and helped make the world “safer and more prosperous.” During this week’s visit, Obama is widely expected to repeat his calls to vote against a Brexit.
Obama has faced a serious backlash from Brits who are part of the “leave” campaign. But why are they so mad? There seem to be three common arguments against Obama’s Brexit intervention:
1. Foreign leaders shouldn’t comment on another country’s domestic affairs.
In a letter signed by 100 members of Parliament, former Conservative cabinet minister Liam Fox argued that Obama should not interfere in the Brexit debate as it has “long been the established practice not to interfere in the domestic political affairs of our allies and we hope that this will continue.”
2. The United States would never agree to be a part of the E.U., they argue, so why should Britain?
The chief proponent of this argument is Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and a leading figure in Cameron’s Conservative Party. In March, Johnson accused the United States of “exorbitant hypocrisy,” saying it was in no position to preach because it defended its own sovereignty with “hysterical vigilance.” He doubled down on this statement recently, saying it was “bizarre” to be lectured by the Americans when they “won’t even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court.”
Other prominant figures within the Conservative Party have supported this view: Former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith recently said that voting to leave the E.U. would make Britain “look a little more like the U.S.” Duncan Smith also suggested that if Washington liked the E.U. so much, perhaps it should join the bloc.
3. Obama hates the British.
It was Nigel Farage, the eccentric leader of the anti-E.U. U.K. Independence Party, who said that Obama is the “most anti-British American president there has ever been.” This is almost certainly untrue, but it taps into a wider belief that maybe Obama just doesn’t really like Britain that much.
This belief dates to at least 2009, when the British media criticized the new president for apparently sending a bust of Winston Churchill back to Britain (
The logic here seems to go that Obama’s hatred for Britain makes him want to keep the country in the E.U., where it will suffer forever more. Or, perhaps more mundanely, Obama could just be acting out of self-interest and be indifferent to what happens to Brits.
