Barack Obama to meet Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, be quizzed by young Londoners and catch some Shakespeare in UK visit
Barack Obama will meet the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, hold a town hall style meeting with young Britons and visit Shakespeare's Globe in the second full day of his visit to the United Kingdom.
The President of the United States caused uproar among Leave campaigners yesterday when he not only issued a passionate plea for Britain to stay in the European Union, but said that if it votes to leave there is little prospect of the US entering into trade negotiations with a post-Brexit UK.
"Maybe there'll be a trade deal somewhere down the line. But it's not going to happen anytime soon," Obama told American and British journalists at a press conference in Whitehall.
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Those campaigning for Brexit immediately dismissed the words of the President. Conservative MP Dominic Raab told the BBC that his comments "don't reflect US trade policy and I'm sure they won't reflect future US trade policy".
"Obama doesn’t have the authority to deny us a deal, as he will be long gone before any such proposals are on the table," said Richard Tice, a co-founder of Leave.EU, one of the groups set up to campaign for a vote to break off from the European Union.
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"British people are puzzled, to say the least, why President Obama should, in the light of his and our failure to reform the Eurozone, come into the midst of our referendum campaign to urge us to remain in the EU, despite an impending collapse of the Eurozone which would impact far more on the UK than the US," added former Labour foreign secretary, Lord Owen.
Today, Obama will meet the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a private meeting, putting to bed a week of speculation over whether the two men would meet. Corbyn has been a critic of American – and Barack Obama's – foreign policy, once branding him a "Pentagon President".
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Obama is set to host a town hall-style meeting – a fixture of the US political scene – for young Londoners later today, where he is expected to be asked additional questions about his comments on the EU referendum.
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He will also visit Shakespeare's Globe on the south bank where he will be given a tour of the replica theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of the death England's most famous playright, before heading off to Regent's Park for a private dinner with David Cameron and Matthew Barzun, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom.