Barack obama

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is Barack Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate a welcome one or should he keep his nose out of our business? Tim Montgomerie says in his Spectator cover piece that such overreach is typical of the US President’s arrogance. But Anne Applebaum disagrees and says that Obama speaks on behalf of many Americans when he calls on Britain to stay engaged in European politics. So should we listen to Obama? Joining Isabel Hardman to discuss is Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray and the

If the number of foreign politicians and international organisations that the government is enlisting in the campaign to stay in the EU is anything to go by, David Cameron and George Osborne are a bit nervous about the outcome of the referendum. This week in particular has seen the Chancellor using not just the might of the Treasury to scare voters about Brexit, or just the might of the President of the United States, but also eight former US Treasury secretaries. In their letter today, the former ministers write that Britain leaving the EU would threaten the Special Relationship. They argue: ‘It would reduce Britain’s very positive influence as an

The US President flies into town next week to wish the Queen a happy 90th birthday and to encourage Britain to stay in the EU. Obama’s will be the most high profile, foreign intervention in this referendum yet. His message will be that it is in the interests of Britain, the US and the West for us to remain in the EU. But the Out campaign have their ‘Love Actually’ moment ready, as I say in my Sun column today. Boris Johnson will knock back Obama’s advice shortly after the president has spoken, pointing out—as he did in this BBC interview—that it is ‘nakedly hypocritical’ for the US to urge

It now looks likely that Barack Obama’s visit to London next week will see the President calling on Britain to stay in the EU. We’re told that Obama will be giving his views as a ‘friend’ and only if he’s asked about Brexit. Nothing sounds more patronising. And as Jacob Rees-Mogg has said, why should we listen to a President who hasn’t been very good? But the truth is that, whether we like it or not, Obama’s intervention could be key. Whatever many think of the President and the collective failures and disappointments of his time in office, Obama is still loved amongst the group of younger voters in Britain

Because Americans love Britain, and because we are a presumptuous lot, we often advise the United Kingdom on its foreign policy. And not only the UK, but Europe. Successive US administrations have urged European nations to form a United States of Europe as an answer to the question attributed to Henry Kissinger: ‘Who do I call if I want to call Europe?’ The latest such unrequested advice was offered to your Prime Minister by no less a foreign-policy maven — see his successes in Libya, Middle East, China, Crimea — than Barack Obama. The outgoing president informed David Cameron that his administration wants to see ‘a strong United Kingdom in

In their interview in the Christmas edition of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth asked the Prime Minister whether he now considered that his intervention in Libya had been a mistake. David Cameron accepted that matters could have gone better since the fall of Gaddafi, but insisted that ‘what we were doing was preventing a mass genocide’. Like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi’s genocide seems to have been a fiction. It was reiterated over and over again by government and in the media in order to whip up support for the imposition a no-fly zone in March 2011. However, there was never any convincing evidence. Later that summer

Because Americans love Britain, and because we are a presumptuous lot, we often advise the United Kingdom on its foreign policy. And not only the UK, but Europe. Successive US administrations have urged European nations to form a United States of Europe as an answer to the question attributed to Henry Kissinger: ‘Who do I call if I want to call Europe?’ The latest such unrequested advice was offered to your Prime Minister by no less a foreign-policy maven — see his successes in Libya, Middle East, China, Crimea — than Barack Obama. The outgoing president informed David Cameron that his administration wants to see ‘a strong United Kingdom in

Today the Electoral Commission have released the campaign expenditure returns of the six political parties that spent £250,000 or more on campaigning in the General Election. While the Conservative’s £15,587,956 campaign bill could be argued to be money well spent given their majority win, Labour have a bit more explaining to do it when it comes to £12,087,340 they splashed on their failed campaign. So, where exactly did the money go? Almost £600 went on chicken suits, while a grand total of £223,573 went to Miliband’s hot shot US Advisor David Axelrod’s company AKP&D Message and Media. However, the bill that is of most interest to Mr S relates to Michael Sheehan. Back in