ANALYSIS James Slack’s
On Friday Barack Obama issued a series of extraordinary threats over the potential consequences of Brexit. Here, we spell out the response of Leave campaigners who say the US president changed his tune over the weekend.
OBAMA’S CLAIM:
The UK would be in the back of the queue for any trade deal.
RESPONSE:
Mr Obama was accused of backtracking after he clarified Friday’s remarks. He said he had simply meant that the UK would ‘not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU’. Justice minister Dominic Raab pointed out there is no queue to be at the back of since the US is only in talks with Brussels.
CLAIM:
Maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it’s not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done.
RESPONSE:
The deal between the EU and the Americans – known as TTIP – is stalled and could even collapse. Germany’s economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, has said negotiations ‘will fail’ if the US refuses to make concessions, adding: ‘The Americans want to hold fast to their “Buy American” idea. We can’t accept that. They don’t want to open their public tenders to European companies. For me, that goes against free trade.’ Mr Raab argues that, if the US wants to put pressure on the European Union, it could quickly strike a deal with a newly independent UK.
CLAIM:
Intelligence sharing and counterterrorism work will be far more effective if it extends across Europe.
RESPONSE:
On the UK/US special relationship on defence and intelligence, Mr Obama yesterday admitted to the BBC: ‘They wouldn’t be affected in the sense that our intelligence teams work extremely close, our militaries work extremely closely together.’
Relations between UK spies and US intelligence agencies have nothing to do with EU membership. The EU’s own Frontex Agency has warned of the danger of jihadists exploiting the EU’s open borders and the migrant crisis to sneak into the continent and plot atrocities – including two of the Paris attackers.