Brexiteers were right! Cameron did ask Obama to say we’d be at ‘ back of queue’ for trade deal
DAVID Cameron did ask Barack Obama to issue a warning that Britain would be at ‘the back of the queue’ for a trade deal with the US if it left the European Union, a former White House adviser has revealed.
Downing Street insisted the then President was using his own words when he made the infamous remarks during a visit to London two months before the 2016 Brexit vote.
But there was speculation at the time that the comment may have been scripted by No 10, because the word ‘queue’ is rarely used by Americans, who prefer the phrase ‘back of the line’.
Mr Obama’s former foreign policy speechwriter Ben Rhodes revealed yesterday that the comment came up in a discussion between the US and UK sides about the implications of Brexit. He said it was Mr Cameron who suggested the President should repeat it in public.
Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Rhodes said: ‘We had come here to try to help the Remain campaign and we had a meeting with David Cameron and his team and we were all kind of in violent agreement about the negative consequences of Brexit.
‘And in talking about the press conference they were going to hold together, Cameron and Obama, we were discussing the arguments for the Brexit campaign.
‘And some of the arguments were based on the notion that the United States could just negotiate its own free trade agreement with the UK quickly and we were all agreeing that that was unlikely to happen. And as Obama was saying that, somebody on the British side said, “We’d end up being at the back of the queue”, and everybody laughed and Obama said, “That is exactly right”.
‘Then he was asked, “It would be good if you could repeat that point in the press conference”, and of course he did.’
Asked whether it was the thenprime minister himself who made the To be request, fair to Mr Cameron, Rhodes said: I don’t ‘Yes. know that Cameron was suggesting the exact phrase that had been used on his side, but that is what was put forward. ‘Obama said, “Yes, I’m here to be helpful”. ‘Substantively, it was correct. It wasn’t true you could just skip to the front of the line, but “queue” is not a word Obama uses in casual conversation.’ At the time Mr Obama stressed that he was ‘not coming here to fix any votes’ but Remain campaigners hoped his intervention in April 2016 would give them a poll boost. But it backfired because voters said they did not like being told what to do by a foreign leader. In his memoirs, published shortly after the referendum, Mr Cameron’s former director of communications Sir Craig Oliver dismissed the idea that Mr Obama’s line had been scripted by the Remain side.
He wrote: ‘There’s some weird whingeing from the Leavers that the fact he said “queue” instead of “line” proves it was written by Number 10. I slap it down. “Nonsense. The President can speak for himself”.’
Sir Craig tweeted last night: ‘Claims that President Obama was told to say “back of the queue” on a post-Brexit trade deal are incorrect.
‘As I said at the time, the President was clear in his own mind and spoke for himself. We were surprised when he used the phrase.’
‘We were in violent agreement’
A UK-US trade agreement... is not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with the EU... The UK is going to be in the back of the queue Barack Obama, April 2016
AT the height of the referendum campaign, Barack Obama warned that Britain would be ‘at the back of the queue’ for a trade deal with America if we left the eU.
It was unusual language for the President to use (Americans would more naturally say ‘the end of the line’) and Brexiteers suspected the words had been put into his mouth. Yesterday we discovered they had – by none other than David Cameron.
And of course, as Donald Trump and his aides have since made clear, this scare story simply wasn’t true. Remainers love to accuse Leave campaigners of having lied to the public during the campaign. Doesn’t this cynical deception – and the rest of Project Fear – show which side told the real whoppers?