Will Obama’s
Brexit intervention make a difference?
Simon Jenkins
Friday 15 April 2016
11.12 BST
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/15/obama-brexit-intervention-difference-us-president
The US president has
declared his support for the remain camp. But Britons might not like
outsiders meddling in their politics
Barack Obama is
right. Britain is America’s closest ally and deserves its
unswerving support in time of peril. If Britain wants his vote on the
EU, that’s the way it will be. It’s high fives for Dave when the
president arrives next week.
But hold on. Which
Britain wants his vote, the inners or the outers? As the BBC would
put it, if that is one American president against Brexit, do we now
need one in favour? It might seem uncontroversial for Obama to remark
that “all of us benefit when the EU can speak with a strong and a
single voice”. But a single European voice, as Gandhi said of
western civilisation, “I think would be a good idea.”
People never like
outsiders meddling in their politics, least of all on the opening day
of a referendum campaign. An election is a deeply chauvinist moment.
But as many world leaders could attest, that has never stopped
America, or Britain, from intervening. It has become the leitmotif of
their diplomacy. A different question is how much Obama’s opinion
matters. Polls indicate that Cameron’s recent slump in fortune has
narrowed the balance to neck-and-neck.
The reality is that
no one has a clue what is going to happen.
The polls have no
idea whether they have their samples right. Political polling has
become an art not a science. Even the arguments themselves seem to
have moved towards equilibrium as the campaign progresses. For each
economic and political prediction about a post-Brexit Britain there
is a counter-prediction. Debate craves a balance. It grows ever
harder to weigh gains against losses. For every Brexit yin there is a
yang.
Cameron calls the
argument “the gamble of the century”, yet there is even a balance
emerging between those who believe it is a gamble and those who do
not. This could indeed be Armageddon, or in the fullness of time it
will make little difference how Britain decides. If we leave we will
negotiate a partial return, and if we stay we will negotiate a
partial leave.
The only certainty
is the absence of certainty. Not only is there no plausible
prediction of the referendum’s outcome, there is no prediction of
the outcome of the outcome. That is the fascination, indeed the
glory, of democratic politics, that the decision of the people is
secret and sovereign. We can argue all night. But like Obama’s
intervention, it could all be wind and waffle. How much wind and
waffle, who can say?
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