Obama urges young to reject isolationism after Brexit plea
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — US President Barack Obama yesterday implored young people in Britain to reject isolationism and xenophobia, a day after wading into the Brexit debate over the country’s referendum on membership of the European Union (EU).
Obama — on the last day of a three-day visit, likely to be his last to Britain before leaving office in January — earlier marked the 400th anniversary of English playwright William Shakespeare’s death with an early-morning trip to London’s Globe theatre to see scenes from Hamlet being performed.
The president later played golf with British Prime Minister David Cameron at a luxury golf course north of London.
Speaking to an audience of 500 young Britons in the capital, Obama said people should take a more “optimistic view”.
“We see new calls for isolationism, for xenophobia. We see those who had called for rolling back the rights of people. People hunkering down in their own points of view and unwilling to engage in a democratic debate,” the president said.
“And those impulses, I think we can understand: they are reactions to changing times and uncertainty.
”But when I speak to young people, I implore them – and I implore you – to reject those calls to pull back.
“I am here to ask you to reject the notion that we are gripped by forces that we can’t control. And I want you to take a longer and more optimistic view of history.”
Touching on the threat from the Islamic State group, Obama also said the greatest allies in the anti-terror fight were Muslim Americans.
“If we engage in Islamophobia we are not only betraying what is essential to us, but, just as a practical matter, we are engaging in self-defeating behaviour if we are serious about terrorism,” he said.
On Friday, the president warned Britain against leaving the EU, undercutting a key argument of Brexit campaigners by saying London would be “at the back of the queue” for a post-Brexit trade deal.
Eurosceptics reacted with irritation, with London Mayor Boris Johnson describing it as “downright hypocritical” for Obama to intervene, as the United States would not accept the same limits on its own sovereignty as EU members do.