Barack Obama to make long-awaited appeal for Britain to stay in EU

US president to visit UK amid growing confidence in Downing Street
that the intellectual tide has turned away from Brexit

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
Thursday 21 April 2016 07.00 BST

Barack Obama is expected to make a calm but emphatic call this week for the UK to remain inside the European Union, using his status as Britain’s firmest ally to counsel that the country’s prosperity and influence will be irreversibly diminished outside the EU.

The US president will make his appeal, which the remain campaign are counting on to tip the balance decisively, both in a newspaper article and remarks at a Downing Street press conference on Friday afternoon.

The importance of the UK as a key figure inside the EU club will be symbolically underscored when Obama again meets David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Matteo Renzi and François Hollande in Hanover, Germany, on Monday to discuss Syria, Libya and the consequent migration crisis. The implicit message is that the UK outside the EU would not have been invited to such a high-level transatlantic conclave.

Obama’s long-awaited intervention is expected to set out not only a positive case for Britain’s influence in Europe, but also describe the UK’s chances of striking independent trade deals with the US if it is outside the European Union as fanciful.

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