Bol News

Senior Tories condemn ‘lame duck’ US president after he said an independent UK would be at back of trade deal queue Senior Eurosceptic Conservatives have dismissed Barack Obama’s suggestion that the UK would be “at the back of the queue” in negotiations for a US trade agreement if it left the European Union . Cabinet ministers accused the “lame duck” US president of making meaningless threats to blackmail the British people into voting to remain in Europe. Others pointed out that Europe and the US had never struck a free trade agreement anyway, and claimed Obama was being manipulated by Downing Street. Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons, said: “We should not give up our independence just because of what President Obama said.” The intervention by Obama, who is popular in Britain, delighted the remain camp, but has left the leave campaign furious. “Barack Obama was doing an old friend a political favour,” said the justice minister Dominic Raab, referring to David Cam...

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