OBAMA ATTEMPTS TO INFLUENCE UK's EU REFERENDUM

The news that President Obama is preparing to plead with Britons to stay in
EU (Times report, February), does nothing to strengthen the case for doing so.

A free-enterprise economy operating in an open, representative democracy
led to the rise of the United States as the pre-eminent global power. It has
underpinned the defence and economies of Western countries since the
Second World War.

These values represent everything that the EU is not. Its Commission, far
from representing the will of the people, represents an unelected and
unaccountable elite. The introduction of the flawed single currency, the
monumentally wasteful Common Agricultural Policy, largely unaudited
capital transfers to the 26 net recipient countries, funded by Germany
and the UK, are manifestly antithetical to what the US has always stood
for.
In  warning the UK against leaving the EU, perhaps President Obama
reflects a possible drift of the US Government into the kind of mindset
that US republicans fear. For economic and other reasons the President
may have come into line with the social, political and economic values
of the US's main trading partner, using its 'special relationship' with the
as a convenient means to an end. This could be a real possibility if a
more left-leaning democrat such as Bernie Sanders were returned to
the White House.
This poses potential risks. With all Western economies virtually flatlining,
how long before the EU Commission begins to insinuate its social objectives
into US policy as a quid pro quo for trade, with predictable economic and
geo-political consequences?