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Obama, on 2-Day Visit to Britain, Has Lunch With Queen Elizabeth II Obama Warns Britain on Trade if It Leaves European Union
(about 5 hours later)
WINDSOR, England — It could have been a scene from “Downton Abbey,” but with helicopters: Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, welcomed President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, on a vast, grassy field in front of Windsor Castle near London on Friday. LONDON — President Obama on Friday bluntly urged Britain to vote to remain inside the European Union in a referendum scheduled for June 23, and warned that a Britain outside the bloc could not count on maintaining its current economic relationship with the United States.
The Marine One helicopter landed just after noon and was met by a small, black Range Rover driven by Prince Philip. As the queen, dressed in a periwinkle outfit with a white scarf around her head, got out of the car, a day after her 90th birthday, the Obamas stepped off the helicopter, and the four greeted one another with handshakes. Taking an unusually direct position on another country’s internal politics, Mr. Obama asserted that Britain’s membership in the bloc did not limit British influence but “magnifies it.”
Prince Philip returned to the driver’s seat and Mr. Obama took the front passenger seat, while the queen and Mrs. Obama rode in the back for the brief trip to the castle, where they were scheduled to have a private lunch. Speaking alongside Prime Minister David Cameron at a news conference, he also directly addressed the potential consequences of a vote by Britain to leave. The president said that to do so would send Britain to the “back of the queue” for a trade deal with the United States, challenging those who have argued that Britain could quickly replicate the same favorable terms it enjoys as a European Union member.
As they arrived at the castle’s quadrangle, they passed Royal Guardsmen dressed in traditional red jackets and black pants. Mr. Cameron is leading the campaign to remain part of Europe, but the issue has deeply divided his Conservative Party and polls suggest that the outcome could be close, making the forcefulness of Mr. Obama’s statements especially striking.
The visit to Windsor Castle is a ceremonial beginning to Mr. Obama’s two days in Britain, where he will meet with Prime Minister David Cameron and hold a town-hall-style meeting with young people. In the evening, the president and first lady will dine with the Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge at Kensington Palace. Mr. Obama was stating his view of American national interests, while also clearly trying to support Mr. Cameron. But the arguments here are fierce and increasingly bitter, and Mr. Obama was attacked as a hypocrite and worse by those who favor a British exit, or Brexit.
It is the third time the queen has received Mr. Obama since he became president. In 2011, the Obamas paid a state visit to Britain and stayed at Buckingham Palace. In 2009, they had a private audience at Buckingham Palace as he attended the Group of 20 summit meeting. Mr. Obama defended the right of a close friend to give an opinion on a matter of mutual interest. “Part of being friends is being honest, and, speaking honestly, the outcome of that referendum is a matter of deep interest to the United States, because it affects our interests as well,” he said.
It was during that meeting that Mrs. Obama and the queen were seen embracing lightly, a rare departure from protocol that was quickly noticed and commented on by members of the British news media. During that visit, Mr. Obama gave the queen an iPod, a gift that also raised some eyebrows. Mr. Obama sidestepped a question on whether the “special relationship” between Washington and London would be damaged if Britain voted to leave the European Union.
British officials said that the queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, had met 11 of the past 12 United States presidents, with Lyndon B. Johnson being the exception. Nor did Mr. Obama comment on a suggestion by Mayor Boris Johnson of London, a leader of the campaign to leave the bloc, that the president was unfriendly to Britain because of his ancestry. Mr. Johnson, a Conservative, suggested on Friday that Mr. Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office because it “was a symbol of the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire, of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.”
After the Obamas left the castle, the White House announced that they had given the queen, for her birthday, a personalized photo album documenting her many visits with presidents and first ladies. The White House said the album contained pictures from the queen’s first visit to the United States, in 1951, when she was Princess Elizabeth, as well as from visits with three presidents, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover. Mr. Obama said he saw another bust of Churchill every day in the White House residence.
“I love the guy,” he said. But as the first African-American president, he said, he “thought it appropriate” to have a bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office.
Mr. Cameron, for his part, smiled thinly and said that “questions for Boris are questions for Boris and not questions for me.”
The prime minister praised Mr. Obama for his friendship and “sage advice,” and said that Britain was made stronger through its continued membership in the European Union and that “the stronger we are, the stronger that special relationship” with the United States will be. Mr. Cameron noted that “it was hard to find any country that wishes Britain well that wants us to leave the E.U.,” and that Britons should listen to their friends and then vote as they choose.
Strong historical, emotional, cultural and security ties with Britain would continue no matter the vote, Mr. Obama said. But the United States, he said, was convinced that Britain made a shaky Europe stronger and more stable by its membership and that the bloc “enhances” Britain’s “influence and power and economy.”
He argued that the United States accepted constraints on its sovereignty, too, in multilateral institutions like NATO, the United Nations Security Council, the Group of 7 and Group of 20, and did so for the common good, which also was in America’s interests.
Earlier on Friday, Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled by helicopter to Windsor Castle for lunch with Queen Elizabeth II, who turned 90 on Thursday, and her husband, Prince Philip, 94.
The Obamas also had a private dinner Friday night with Prince William and his wife, Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince Harry at Kensington Palace in London.
Mr. Obama’s comments at the news conference underlined his argument, made in an op-ed piece published on Friday in The Daily Telegraph, that Britain is stronger and more influential inside the European Union.
The president’s decision to wade into the issue during his two-day visit prompted objections from many supporters of the campaign to leave the European Union. Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, said that Mr. Obama should “butt out.”
One of the most polarizing responses came from Mr. Johnson, who was born in Manhattan and retains his American passport as a dual citizen. Mr. Johnson, who is also a member of Parliament and has ambitions to replace Mr. Cameron as prime minister, has argued that the United States is a traditional nation-state that would never transfer some of its sovereignty to any European Union-like organization.
“For the United States to tell us in the U.K. that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy — it is a breathtaking example of the principle of do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do,” Mr. Johnson wrote in The Sun newspaper, which is influential among working-class voters.
“It is incoherent. It is inconsistent, and yes it is downright hypocritical,” Mr. Johnson said.
On Twitter, Nicholas Soames, a Conservative member of Parliament and a grandson of Churchill, condemned Mr. Johnson’s essay, calling it “an appalling article” that is “totally wrong on almost everything.” It was “inconceivable,” Mr. Soames said, that his grandfather would “not have welcomed” the president’s views on Britain’s role in Europe.
A former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Menzies Campbell, said that “many people will find Boris Johnson’s loaded attack on President Obama’s sincerity deeply offensive,” and Diane Abbott, a Labour Party lawmaker, said that “Boris dismissing President Obama as ‘half-Kenyan’ reflects the worst Tea Party rhetoric.”
American officials suggested that there was an internal debate about the wisdom of the straightforward opinion editorial Mr. Obama wrote in The Telegraph, but decided that it was better to be upfront about the president’s views as he arrived in Britain and not pretend to be coy.
Mr. Cameron clearly favored a strong message from the American president, whose position is shared by the leaders of Britain’s main European allies, France and Germany.
Britain and France are the two strongest military powers in Europe, and Britain is the second-largest economy in the European Union and fifth largest in the world.
The economic risks of Britain’s exit from the union are important to British voters, but so are immigration and the inability of Britain to limit the number of European Union citizens who want to live and work here. While studies show that the immigrants contribute considerably more to the British budget in taxes than they receive in benefits, there are worries that the immigrants are taking jobs away from Britons.
These arguments are likely to be more important than those about Britain’s standing in the world or the country’s relationship with the United States.