Texas Senator and Republican Party Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said yesterday President Obama’s upcoming UK visit and intervention in the European Union (EU) debate will make a Brexit more likely.
Campaigning in North Carolina ahead of this Tuesday’s state primary, the Guardian reports Senator Cruz spoke to reporters about President Obama’s possible April visit to the UK, around the time he visits German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during which he is likely to urge British voters to back continued membership of the EU.
Predicting that the U.S. President’s intervention in the debate may backfire, Senator Cruz warned that “if anything his campaigning against [Brexit] will make it more likely that England will pull out of the EU.”
It has long been thought that President Obama was planning a “big, public reach-out” to persuade British voters to stay inside the EU, but as Breitbart London previously reported both Downing Street and the White House are said to be concerned that a President’s intervention “be handled sensitively and could backfire unless it is pitched at the right geopolitical level.”
The subject of an intervention from President Obama was discussed earlier this year by members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The Republican Senator and Committee Chairman, Bob Corker, recalled how interventions from the UK into domestic U.S. politics were rarely taken well, and asked:
“How do you think the people of the UK will respond to us at the highest level embracing this?”
Senator Cruz’s comments to reporters make clear his answer to that question, although he did not say if he thought the UK leaving the EU would harm the U.S. national interest — something the American foreign policy establishment has long argued in the face of scepticism from many on the American right.
Instead Senator Cruz expressed his belief that President Obama had hurt “our alliances” and “harmed our friendships” around the world, and that enemies of the U.S. “have learned this President is not a credible threat for anything”.