US President Barack Obama touched down in London on Thursday to deliver a clear message to Britons: The United States wants the United Kingdom to remain in a European Union — and that the risks of the so-called ‘Brexit” are too great. But whether Britons will welcome his message or shun it as political interference from a lame-duck leader remains to be seen.
The transatlantic support is welcomed by Prime Minister David Cameron, and after a month in which his political capital has been eroded by Panama Papers revelations that he and his family benefitted from offshore tax arrangements, any support now is a relief.
The timings of the revelations couldn’t have been worse, with Cameron already reeling from the resignation of senior Conservative minister Iain Duncan Smith from his cabinet over a budget that cut too hard and too deep into disability allowances.
Cameron’s backroom team then bungled his response to the Panama Papers, bumbling and mumbling for a week before admitting that his father set up offshore trusts and that Cameron held and sold shares in the tax-avoidance vehicle.
With the binding ‘In’ or ‘Out’ referendum on the EU now in two months, there is little time for Cameron to recover and lead the charge on his nation staying in a reformed Brussels framework.
The decision to throw the dice on a referendum was Cameron’s — just as he risked the unity of the United Kingdom itself in September 2014 by offering Scotland a plebiscite on independence. He narrowly won then, and the June 23 vote is now finely balanced. Opinions polls show a nation evenly split.
If he loses, Cameron, like Obama, will be a lame duck too. But that will be the least of Britain’s worries then.
