Dear Barack Obama, Leave Britain Alone!

“Having the United Kingdom in the European Union gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union,” said President Barack Obama on Thursday, thereby charging headlong into the minefield that is Anglo-European relations right now.
Britain faces a referendum about whether to stay in the EU, so when the American president describes it as “part of the cornerstone of the institutions built after [World War II] that has made the world safer and more prosperous,” his remarks constitute a major foreign intervention into British domestic politics.
The supporters of Britain’s continued membership of the EU, which she joined in 1973, have hailed Obama’s intervention with glee, arguing that it proves that the “Special Relationship” would be badly damaged if she voted to leave.
Opponents wonder whether Britons should really be taking lessons about the Special Relationship from the man who had Winston Churchill’s bust removed from the Oval Office, arranged a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the kitchens of a New York hotel, and who told French President Nicolas Sarkozy, “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than the French people.”