On his farewell tour, Barack Obama is really winning friends and influencing people from Saudi Arabia to the UK. His attempt at bullying the Brits over the EU appears to have backfired badly.
Penny Mordaunt is the Minister of State for the Armed Forces in the UK. She was the daughter of a military man and named after the HMS Penelope. She is the only female who is a Royal Naval Reservist in the House of Commons. And she has a few words for Obama on his disastrous visit.
First, she points out that Obama doesn't seem to understand the difference between the EU and NATO.
Unfortunately this opinion betrays a woeful ignorance of the practical reality of the EU’s impact on our security, and the interests of the U.K. and the US. Obama warned on Friday that divisions in Europe will weaken Nato, but often those divisions are caused by the EU itself. Obama confuses collective action and defence through Nato with the integration at all costs and damn the consequences ideology that too often motivates the EU.
Then she points out that the EU's open borders actually undermine national security
The President must be unaware of the alarming weaknesses that allow Daesh terrorists to move unimpeded across Europe are the result of the EU’s bull-headed desire to take down all frontiers on the continent. Even in this country, although we are outside the Schengen borderless zone, European free movement rules mean we cannot keep out those we suspect wish us harm if it is based on incomplete evidence.
Then she suggests that he get a briefing from the CIA.
Obama cannot appreciate how the ECJ has repeatedly undermined the arrangements which enable the UK and US to share intelligence. I am sure the CIA would be happy to explain to him why that the creation of a EU intelligence agency will not result in intelligence being shared EU-wide.
I'm sure the CIA would be happy to explain lots of things to Obama. Not that it would ever get the chance.
Nor could he have seen the result of the EU’s drive for a borderless Europe, when one country, Germany, invited in any migrant who wanted to go there, this led to chaos, division and resentment.
But Obama just declared that as being the right side of history.
Did he miss what happened to Greece?
Probably.
Is he oblivious to the suffering, the resulting tensions, the distrust, the rise of extremism?
See above.
In the words of another American president and great friend of Britain, Ronald Reagan, "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” We can say the same of the EU for Britain today. For the sake of our future security, it is time to leave.