15,000 sign petition to stop hypocrite Obama intervening in EU referendum

[Blackleaf]

Barack Obama will fly to Britain next month to urge voters to back staying in the European Union, it was revealed this morning.

The US President is planning a 'big, public reach-out' to British voters to make the case for staying in the Brussels club.

But Brexit campaigners have hit back, saying the intervention from the president of a country that won its independence through a civil war was hypocritical and told Mr Obama to 'keep his views to himself'.

And an online petition to stop him from intervening in the EU referendum has already attracted more than 15,000 signatures.

The US President will stop off in Britain as part of his trip to Germany, where he is due to open the Hannover Messe 2016 technology fair on April 24.


Barack Obama will fly to Britain next month to urge voters to stay in the EU... but he is immediately accused of hypocrisy as he is reminded of how the US won independence

US President will stop off in the UK on his trip to Germany on April 24
He will make a 'big, public reach-out' to persuade British voters to back EU
But Brexit campaigners remind him of US Declaration of Independence
More than 15,000 have signed petition to stop him intervening in EU vote
His intervention is seen as a way of repairing relations with Cameron after Libya criticsm
For the latest news on the EU referendum visit UK European Referendum Polls and Brexit Campaign News | Daily Mail Online

By Matt Dathan, Mailonline Political Correspondent
13 March 2016
The Telegraph

Barack Obama will fly to Britain next month to urge voters to back staying in the European Union, it was revealed this morning.

The US President is planning a 'big, public reach-out' to British voters to make the case for staying in the Brussels club.

But Brexit campaigners have hit back, saying the intervention from the president of a country that won its independence through a civil war was hypocritical and told Mr Obama to 'keep his views to himself'.

The US President (pictured boarding Air Force One in Dallas yesterday) is planning a 'big, public reach-out' to British voters to make the case for staying in the Brussels club

Barack Obama (pictured greeting people yesterday at a Democratic National Convention in Dallas) will fly to Britain next month to urge voters to back staying in the EU

And an online petition to stop him from intervening in the EU referendum has already attracted more than 15,000 signatures.

The US President will stop off in Britain as part of his trip to Germany, where he is due to open the Hannover Messe 2016 technology fair on April 24.

A Number 10 source told The Independent on Sunday that Mr Obama will take the opportunity to call on British voters to stay in the EU.

'Barack Obama is coming over at around that time...it would be pretty shocking if he didn't ask voters to stay in the EU,' the source told the newspaper.

Barack Obama's intervention next month will be seen as part of efforts to repair relations with David Cameron after the US President criticised the UK Prime Minister over his foreign policy

It will be seen as part of Mr Obama's efforts to repair relations with David Cameron after the US President criticised the UK Prime Minister over his foreign policy.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the influential US Senate foreign relations committee, suggested last month that Mr Obama was planning a 'big, public reach-out' in the EU referendum campaign.

But the timing of his intervention - which will come just two months before the June 23 vote - has already caused controversy.

Steve Baker, one of the leading figures in the Vote Leave campaign, reminded the US President how his country won independence through a civil war and said the Out campaign was planning a much more 'peaceful' solution to 'independence'.

'Whenever a US president intervenes in our constitutional future, I always reread the US Declaration of Independence,' he told The Independent on Sunday.

'We will solve peacefully at the ballot box the problem for which their nation fought a bloody war of insurrection.'

Another Eurosceptic Tory MP, Peter Bone, said: 'Why should President Obama tell the UK whether we should be part of a European superstate or a sovereign nation? He should keep his comments, his views, to himself.'

A campaign has been launched on the UK Parliament's website to 'Prevent Obama From Speaking In Westminster Regarding The In/Out Referendum'.

It has already attracted more than 15,000 signatures - passing the 10,000 threshold needed for the Government to give a response.

If it reaches 100,000 names the motion will be considered for a debate by MPs in the House of Commons.

Mr Obama's trip to the UK next month will be his first meeting with Mr Cameron after he openly criticised Mr Cameron's foreign policy in Libya last week.

The US President used a damning interview with The Atlantic magazine to claim Mr Cameron had been 'distracted by other things' when he should have been stablising Libya in 2011.

And he revealed that he warned Mr Cameron last summer that the 'special relationship' between Britain and America would be lost if he refused to commit to spending the Nato target of 2 per cent of GDP on defence.

He said he wanted Britain and France to take the lead in Libya to break their habit of 'pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game'.

His remarkably candid remarks put the 'special relationship' between the two countries at risk and the White House scrambled to repair relations with Downing Street hours after the interview was published.

Matthew Barzun, the US Ambassador to the UK posted a series of tweets insisting the relationship between the two countries remained 'special' and 'essential' while the White House sent out aides to praise Mr Cameron as a 'close partner' of Mr Obama.

But the former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell hit back at Mr Obama, rejecting his criticism and dismissed his comments as 'unfair'.

And he said Mr Obama has questions to answer himself over his handling of the crisis in Syria.

'The French and British governments did an immense amount of stabilisation planning and support for the period after the immediate conflict was over. But the truth is there was no peace to stabilise,' he said.

Mr Mitchell added: 'The President has every right to express a view over Libya. America did not show a leadership role and many of us have been dismayed that America continues not to show a leadership role in the cataclysmic events which have, and are, taking place in Syria.'

A White House spokesman said there was no visit planned to the UK 'at this time'.


Read more: Barack Obama will fly to Britain next month to urge voters to stay in the EU | Daily Mail Online
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[Blackleaf]

Boris Johnson: Americans would never accept EU restrictions – so why should we?

Barack Obama's plan to urge voters to remain in the European Union is a 'piece of outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy', Boris Johnson writes


By London Mayor and Leave campaigner Boris Johnson MP, video source ITN
14 Mar 2016

Comment

I love America. I believe in the American dream. Indeed, I hold that the story of the past 100 years has been very largely about how America rose to global greatness – and how America has helped to preserve and expand democracy around the world. In two global conflicts, and throughout the Cold War, the United States has fought for the founding ideals of the republic: that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.

So it is on the face of it a bit peculiar that US government officials should believe that Britain must remain within the EU – a system in which democracy is increasingly undermined.

Some time in the next couple of months we are told that President Obama himself is going to arrive in this country, like some deus ex machina, to pronounce on the matter. Air Force One will touch down; a lectern with the presidential seal will be erected. The British people will be told to be good to themselves, to do the right thing. We will be informed by our most important ally that it is in our interests to stay in the EU, no matter how flawed we may feel that organisation to be. Never mind the loss of sovereignty; never mind the expense and the bureaucracy and the uncontrolled immigration.

The American view is very clear. Whether in code or en clair, the President will tell us all that UK membership of the EU is right for Britain, right for Europe, and right for America. And why? Because that – or so we will be told – is the only way we can have “influence” in the counsels of the nations.

It is an important argument, and deserves to be taken seriously. I also think it is wholly fallacious – and coming from Uncle Sam, it is a piece of outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy.

There is no country in the world that defends its own sovereignty with such hysterical vigilance as the United States of America. This is a nation born from its glorious refusal to accept overseas control. Almost two and a half centuries ago the American colonists rose up and violently asserted the principle that they – and they alone – should determine the government of America, and not George III or his ministers. To this day the Americans refuse to kneel to almost any kind of international jurisdiction. Alone of Western nations, the US declines to accept that its citizens can be subject to the rulings of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. They have not even signed up to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Can you imagine the Americans submitting their democracy to the kind of regime that we have in the EU?

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is the outgoing Mayor of London and the Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He was born in Manhattan on 19 June 1964 and was also a US citizen until he renounced his US citizenship last year. Earlier this year he joined the campaign for Britain to leave the EU ahead of the in/out referendum in June. His biggest ambition is to be UK Prime Minister

Think of Nafta – the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement – that links the US with Canada and Mexico. Suppose it were constituted on the lines of the EU, with a commission and a parliament and a court of justice. Would the Americans knuckle under – to a Nafta commission and parliament generating about half their domestic law? Would they submit to a Nafta court of justice – supreme over all US institutions – and largely staffed by Mexicans and Canadians whom the people of the US could neither appoint nor remove? No way. The idea is laughable, and completely alien to American traditions. So why is it essential for Britain to comply with a system that the Americans would themselves reject out of hand? Is it not a blatant case of “Do as I say, but not as I do”?

Of course it is. As for this precious “influence”, so dearly bought, I am not sure that it is all it is cracked up to be – or that Britain’s EU membership is really so valuable to Washington. Since the very foundation of the Common Market, the Washington establishment has supported the idea of European integration. The notable state department figure George W Ball worked on drafting the Schuman plan in 1950. He was a pallbearer at the funeral of Jean Monnet, the architect of the European project.

The Americans see the EU as a way of tidying up a continent whose conflicts have claimed huge numbers of American lives; as a bulwark against Russia, and they have always conceived it to be in American interests for the UK – their number one henchperson, their fidus Achates – to be deeply engaged. Symmetrically, it has been a Foreign Office superstition that we are more important to Washington if we can plausibly claim to have “influence” in Brussels. But with every year that passes that influence diminishes.

It is not just that we are being ever more frequently outvoted in the council of ministers, and our officials ever more heavily outnumbered in the Commission. The whole concept of “pooling sovereignty” is a fraud and a cheat. We are not really sharing control with other EU governments: the problem is rather that all governments have lost control to the unelected federal machine. We don’t know who they are, or what language they speak, and we certainly don’t know what we can do to remove them at an election.

When Americans look at the process of European integration, they make a fundamental category error. With a forgivable narcissism, they assume that we Europeans are evolving – rather haltingly – so as to become just like them: a United States of Europe, a single federal polity. That is indeed what the eurozone countries are trying to build; but it is not right for many EU countries, and it certainly isn’t right for Britain.

There is a profound difference between the US and the EU, and one that will never disappear. The US has a single culture, a single language, a single and powerful global brand, and a single government that commands national allegiance. It has a national history, a national myth, a demos that is the foundation of their democracy. The EU has nothing of the kind. In urging us to embed ourselves more deeply in the EU’s federalising structures, the Americans are urging us down a course they would never dream of going themselves. That is because they are a nation conceived in liberty. They sometimes seem to forget that we are quite fond of liberty, too.

Video: Boris Johnson: Americans would never accept EU restrictions – so why should we? - Telegraph

 

[EagleSmack]

Man you better hope the UK leaves the EU. You are going to catch so much flack in here if they vote to stay.

 

[Blackleaf]

Man you better hope the UK leaves the EU.

I DO hope it's going to leave the EU, as I'm a Brexiteer - and I think we will win.

Even if the Remain side win the EU is in terminal decline and is not going to be around for much longer anyway. It's just better for Britain to get off the Titanic before it hits the iceberg.

 

[Ludlow]

Youll do what you're told and accept the way things are and like It Blacklout.

 

[Blackleaf]

Youll do what you're told and accept the way things are and like It Blacklout.

I'm sorry, but you're talking to the BRITISH here.

 

[Jinentonix]

He said he wanted Britain and France to take the lead in Libya to break their habit of 'pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game'.

Da faq? Britain was the ONLY country to join the US in Iraq after being "pushed to act" and quite frankly, they did a MUCH better job of it than the US.
Maybe Obongo should take his head out of his a$$ and come to the realization that history didn't just start when he became president.
Besides, wtf would he know about what's best for the British people? This is a goof who insulted Britain in his very first days in office by returning the bust of Churchill that was given as a GIFT to the Whitehouse after WW2.

 

[JLM]

I'm sorry, but you're talking to the BRITISH here.

Is that something special?

 

[MHz]

Look what a fine job he is doing protecting the Ukraine from being overrun by crooks and hookers.

I'm sorry, but you're talking to the BRITISH here.

You spelled BRUTEISH wrong.

 

[Blackleaf]

Da faq? Britain was the ONLY country to join the US in Iraq after being "pushed to act" and quite frankly, they did a MUCH better job of it than the US.
Maybe Obongo should take his head out of his a$$ and come to the realization that history didn't just start when he became president.
Besides, wtf would he know about what's best for the British people? This is a goof who insulted Britain in his very first days in office by returning the bust of Churchill that was given as a GIFT to the Whitehouse after WW2.

When Obama comes to Britain and tells the British people that, in no uncertain terms, they must vote to stay in the EU it will actually be a boost to the Leave campaign. The British people (including Gibraltareans, who are also voting in the referendum) aren't going to take too kindly to a foreign Head of State lecturing them. It'll just persuade more people to vote to Leave.

And, according to a new poll, the Leave campaign already has the lead:

EU referendum: Brexit campaign has the edge, says Telegraph poll

Exclusive poll for The Telegraph shows that Out supporters are more motivated to win

The referendum is currently delicately balanced, the Telegraph poll finds

By Peter Dominiczak, and Steven Swinford
15 Mar 2016
The Telegraph

Supporters of Brexit are more likely to vote in the forthcoming referendum which could give the Leave campaign a decisive edge in the final result, a new Telegraph poll suggests.

Analysis of the survey by Sir Lynton Crosby shows that voters who want Britain to leave the European Union are more motivated than those who say they are in favour of staying in.

Writing exclusively for The Telegraph, the electoral strategist who helped secure David Cameron’s surprise win last year says that victory now hinges on whichever campaign inspires people to turn out and vote.

Sir Lynton says that the final outcome “is in the balance” and that the choice facing voters is whether the economic risks of remaining in the EU are bigger or smaller than the implications of uncontrolled immigration.

​

He says that both campaigns should look to the impact of EU membership on public services if they are to convince the public of their arguments.

Sir Lynton writes that the Government’s “Project Fear” campaign may not ultimately prove successful because the public see risks in both leaving and staying in the EU.

Mr Cameron’s adviser, who also helped Boris Johnson become London mayor and is close to both men, is not expected to join either campaign but will instead offer regular analysis for The Telegraph of opinion polls commissioned by the title.

Tuesday's ORB poll finds that without taking into account people’s likelihood to vote, the campaigns are virtually tied, with Remain on 47 per cent and Leave on 49 per cent.

However, when likelihood to vote is taken into account, the Leave campaign would win on 52 per cent of the vote, with remain trailing on 45 per cent. It also reveals that one third of undecided voters (31 per cent) say their “biggest hesitation” in backing the Remain campaign is the “potential for uncontrolled or increased immigration” in the EU.

“Those voters who are undecided or likely to change their minds believe risks of both leave and remain to be real, and locked in deadlock,” Sir Lynton writes. “So how to increase the risk for one side or the other to get ahead? One way is to look to public services.

“The truth is that it is only with a strong economy you can pay for a good NHS, better schools, and more police. But it is also true that the more pressure you put on the NHS, schools, and the emergency services through greater use, the more they will suffer.”

Who can vote in the EU referendum?

Anyone who would be entitled to vote in a parliamentary election in the UK has the right to participate in the in/out vote on the EU. This includes:

British citizens over 18 who are resident in the UK

Irish citizens over 18 who are resident in the UK (due to historically close Anglo-Irish links)

Maltese and Cypriots (Commonwealth citizens) over 18 who are resident in the UK (other EU citizens will not)

Other Commonwealth-born citizens over 18 who are resident in the UK

British expats who have lived overseas for less than 15 years

Citizens in Gibraltar over 18

Members of the House of Lords in Gibraltar will also be entitled to vote

Read more: Foreigners barred from historic EU vote

Sir Lynton’s analysis of the poll will be closely watched in Westminster, where he is credited with not only Mr Cameron’s 2015 victory but Boris Johnson’s two wins in the mayoral contest.

It came as David Cameron warned that Britain has just “100 days to secure our future” by voting to remain in the EU and that UK streets will be more dangerous if the country votes to leave.

Monday was also a day of further turmoil across Europe. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, faced an electoral backlash over her immigration policies, while in Greece there were more chaotic scenes as migrants surged across a river border with Macedonia.

Several refugees including a pregnant women drowned as they tried to force their way across the continent.

On Tuesday The Telegraph begins the first in a series of polls which seek to track the underlying mood of the nation on key issues around the referendum and the likelihood of people voting. Leave supporters are much more likely to say that they will get out and vote.

According to the poll, 79 per cent of those intending to back a “Brexit” say they are certain to vote, with 72 per cent of Remain voters saying the same.

The analysis finds “a real risk” for Mr Cameron’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU is “complacency” because over three quarters (76 per cent) of people expect the country to vote to stay in the bloc.

The survey also shows that Leave voters do not believe their vote will sufficiently affect the outcome of the vote, with 50 per cent believing the UK is likely to remain in the EU regardless.

Sir Lynton writes: “If as the election draws closer, Leave voters still do not believe their vote can affect the outcome, their engagement and motivation may tail off. Poignantly, the challenge for both campaigns is the same: to raise the importance of the referendum outcome and demonstrate to their voters that there really is the potential for Leave to win.”

Although the poll finds nearly a third of undecided voters are reluctant to vote for Remain because of concerns about immigration, a similar proportion of those undecided would be put off voting to leave because of the “damage it might cause to the UK economy”.

Sir Lynton writes: “While much has been made of 'Project Fear’, the reality is that voters see risk on both sides.”

Data was collected via telephone from 823 members of the public between March 11-14 2016. The statistical margin of error is +3.4 per cent


EU referendum: Brexit campaign has the edge, says Telegraph poll - Telegraph

 

[Praxius]

So the US won their independence through a Civil War?

Odd, I thought the Civil War came after the War of Independence.

 

[Blackleaf]

So the US won their independence through a Civil War?

Odd, I thought the Civil War came after the War of Independence.

The American War of Independence was a civil war.

 

[Jinentonix]

So the US won their independence through a Civil War?

In a sense, yes. There were countrymen fighting each other over whether to remain a British colony or become an independent country.

 

[Blackleaf]

In a sense, yes. There were countrymen fighting each other over whether to remain a British colony or become an independent country.

The American colonials were British until they became an independent nation.

 

[Ludlow]

The American colonials were British until they became an independent nation.

yes and the nut doesn't fall far from the tree ya fowkin thieves

 

[Jinentonix]

The American colonials were British until they became an independent nation.

Well
obviously enough of them did NOT feel British before 1776.

 

[Blackleaf]

Well
obviously enough of them did NOT feel British before 1776.

Whether some of them felt British or not is besides the point. They WERE British and, despite the fact they threw their toys out of the pram because the British Government rightfully told them to pay for the Seven Years' War, a war in which the British defended them from French encroachment, they paid less taxes than the Britons in Britain.

 

[Curious Cdn]

The American colonials were British until they became an independent nation.

Two independent nations, eventually. The American Revolution created two countries, not just one.