Kindly Leave Us Alone

In principle I was in favour of Barack Obama when elected, if for no greater reason than that my old friend Jeff Blodgett in Minnesota both worked for and endorsed him. However there is something irritatingly smug about Obama, first signified by his deliberate references to 'British Petroleum' rather than the correct 'BP' at the time of the oil spill fiasco. Now he has excelled himself by his pompous and semi-informed urgings on behalf of the EU Remain campaign. Quite why he feels the need to be so raucous on the topic would be a mystery were it not for his lame duck status back home and the consequent desire to think that he actually still matters. So it is that the sainted one has taken the lead from the equally smug (but massively less photogenic - one has to concede that Obama looks presidential) Boy Cameron and has chucked the truth out of the window in making his euro point.

Here's some verbatim Obama drivel:

From the ashes of war, those who came before us had the foresight to create the international institutions and initiatives to sustain a prosperous peace: the United Nations and Nato; Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and the European Union. Their efforts provided a foundation for democracy, open markets and rule of law, while underwriting more than seven decades of relative peace and prosperity in Europe.

Can we please get this straight - the European Union was created only in 1993, progeny of the EEC. And as for it being a bastion of democracy, well don't get me started.

More Obama:

In this complicated, connected world, the challenges facing the EU - migration, economic inequality, the threats of terrorism and climate change - are the same challenges facing the United States and other nations. And in today's world, even as we all cherish our sovereignty, the nations who wield their influence most effectively are the nations that do it through the collective action that today's challenges demand.

I'm sorry but really - 'cherising their sovereignty' - what he really means, condescension being his long suit, is that untrammelled sovereignty is fine for the big boys but that a little bitty piss-ant has-been like the UK should stop being so twee about something as passe as representative democracy. That is, as I have said before, a perfectly arguable point but what I also keep coming back to is that it is one that should be made openly and truthfully. Obama is an impressive and symbolically important figure but his utterings on the EU are mere sententious claptrap. Shame also on our Prime Minister for encouraging him in this sort of smallness, although it's pretty much what one has come to expect.