Obama has no clout to block Brexit: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Robert Oulds, the director of Bruges Group from London, to discuss the recent visit of US President Barack Obama to Britain.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: You heard that the US president coming into another country namely the UK giving that speech. What was your reaction?

Oulds: It was a speech that was probably wrote for him by 10 Downing Street, by the British prime minister and his office really was using the words that other people have also said … So, I think this is really an intervention by Barack Obama in an internal British matter, which is not welcomed but it is something which is playing a political game. It is getting involved in a referendum on the terms of which the government wants. That is really unfair. I think Barack Obama should be minding his own business. He is in reality now a lame-duck president within the United States and his word does not really matter in Britain anymore because he has very little influence in the United States despite being the president because shortly he would be leaving office. So it is not up to him to decide what Britain should be doing because he would be retiring very shortly and spending even more time playing golf.

Press TV: Do you think that the way that Obama expressed the relationship that would exist between the US and the UK where the UK to exit that in a sort of veiled threat that the US would not do that much business with the UK or not as much business with the UK as it would do with the EU?

Oulds: At the moment there is a lot of trade as around 57 billion dollars worth of trade between Britain and the United States. We have a sort of trade balance at the moment. They sell about the same as we sell to the United States. So really there is trade that matter but now they will not stop, they will not really stop the trade. What President Obama was affirming to, he was talking about that there wouldn’t be this Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the United States and the European Union including Britain if Britain is outside of the EU. But of course the thing is we don’t actually want that deal. The trade deal was being negotiated between the United States and the European Union at the moment is actually one that threatens democracy because it has as part of the agreement invested dispute resolution and corporations can sue national governments and get damages if there has been any policies which basically limit competition. It is opening up national democracies to being sued by corporations. We don’t actually want that deal. So Britain coming outside of the European Union with this TTP agreement no longer applied to the UK, which is actually a good thing and of course we should have a free trade deal with the United States but not one which allows corporations to push around national governments. So really when Barack Obama says that we are not going to have this trade deal, I think that is a good thing.

Press TV: There are some speculations that you kind of hinted at that in some ways that David Cameron actually did ask Obama to come to make that speech that is all David Cameron is doing perhaps in some respects. Of course we know that the US would take a hit also from this but do you think that David Cameron did anything to Obama coming and talking about this Brexit in the former manner that he did?

Oulds: Absolutely because Barack Obama is on his farewell because he is leaving office but he has been put up to this. David Cameron, the British prime minister, is very worried because there is very good chance of Britain to vote to leave the European Union, which is a good thing because Britain would be an independent country once again. We have to have our own foreign policy not being dictated to by the United Sates or the European Union. We will have a government which is accountable to the British people for the first time in a very long time and that is something to be welcomed. So David Cameron is trying to put all these international leaders to back up his case because basically he has been failing to make the case for Britain to remain in the European Union because it looks like Britain may well indeed leave.

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