Brit Exit...

How David Cameron got Barack Obama to fight Brexit

The British prime minister made a direct appeal for the presidential visit ahead of the June referendum.

By Tom McTague and Edward-Isaac Dovere

If all goes according to Downing Street’s plan, David Cameron and Barack Obama will walk side-by-side into Number 10’s grand, wood-paneled state dining room shortly before the evening newscasts Friday to make an emphatic case for why Britain belongs in the European Union.

This is the moment when Obama is fully weaponized in the government’s PR war on Brexit.

For Number 10, it will be the culmination of months of meticulous planning through diplomatic back channels, led by Cameron’s chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, and American political operative Jim Messina, who has served as a top adviser to Obama and Cameron. The president’s decision to effectively stump for Cameron came after a direct intervention from the prime minister last year, according to a source familiar with Cameron’s thinking.

Rattled by tighter-than-expected poll numbers, Cameron asked Obama to make the trip during the referendum campaign rather than wait until July when the president was also scheduled to be in Europe.

White House officials insist the president will not meddle in Britain’s internal debate over Europe, but acknowledged that if he happened to be asked his view, “as a friend, he will offer it.” Cameron aides expect the intervention to be an important moment, particularly in motivating young voters.

The highly unusual U.S. push has stirred controversy in Britain. The Leave campaign views Obama’s three-day London stopover as a Cameron-led effort to inflict maximum damage. Their best hope is that the whole thing looks unseemly to average Brits, an unwelcome campaign by outsiders to bully the country and do Brussels’ bidding.

“The British public won’t take too kindly to a foreigner telling them what to think,” said Conservative MP David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who challenged Cameron for the Tory leadership. “People will think they are being lectured at by someone who does not know what he’s talking about, which would be a fair description.”

They expect that Obama, as the leader of the free world who remains very popular abroad, can make Brexit look dangerously isolating for the U.K.. Obama enjoys favorability ratings of 83 percent among British voters and 91 percent among those who are undecided in the June 23 referendum, according to Downing Street poll numbers.

Cameron, in contrast, is languishing at minus 25 percent, according to the latest IpsosMori survey.

Also stoking interest in the trip is whether Obama will meet with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. So far, nothing is on the books, and a senior Obama administration official said there were “no plans” to meet him.

It would be a major embarrassment for Corbyn, given Obama’s practice of meeting with the U.K.’s opposition leaders. He met Cameron for the first time during a trip to London in 2008, two years before he became prime minister.

Packaged for TV

The timing of the Cameron-Obama press conference isn’t coincidental.

Craig Oliver, Downing Street’s chief spin doctor who is taking over the In campaign’s communications strategy, is aiming for blanket coverage on Britain’s well-watched nightly newscasts. As a former senior BBC executive, Oliver has been credited with tilting Number 10’s media focus away from the print media towards TV, which is legally bound in the U.K. to be impartial.

The BBC’s 6 p.m. news bulletin reaches 4.5 million people, more than twice the audience of any national newspaper, and it hits the right demographic: the informed, professional middle class viewed as the key to a Remain victory.

The 4:50 p.m. start time gives TV producers just enough time to package up the Obama intervention.

A senior British government source told POLITICO the Obama trip had three main objectives.

First, Obama can reach voters who may have already turned on Cameron.

“He’s going to support us on the EU and that’s going to be a really important moment,” the government source said. “It’s a real difficult one for the Leave campaign to rebut. They have been trying to find ways to say that the U.S. president can’t have an opinion on this, which obviously he can.”

Second, the visit is “an opportunity to show the closeness of the relationship” between the U.K. and U.S., which was called into question last month when Obama criticized Cameron over his handling of the Libya crisis. Cameron failed to win parliamentary approval for airstrikes against Syria in 2013, and he dithered over British military spending before the general election last year.

Third, it will show Cameron engaged in “grown-up diplomacy,” the source said. Number 10 hopes to paint the bilateral meeting of the two global leaders in Downing Street’s White Room in stark contrast to the sniping at Obama from Conservative MPs.

There has not been any high-level coordination on what exactly Obama will say. “We believe he should be allowed to say what he wants to say,” the source said. “Look, we can’t tell a U.S. president what to say.”

One of the key targets for Obama is young voters who still overwhelmingly like him.

Youth turnout in a summer referendum could be difficult, with the major Glastonbury festival on that weekend and England, Wales and Northern Ireland playing in football’s European Championships.

“The public polls have it right that the anti-EU voters are more motivated,” said the source familiar with Cameron’s thinking.

To reach that group, Obama will join Cameron for a town hall with young people Saturday at the Royal Horticultural Hall in central London, close to the prestigious Grey Coat Hospital School attended by Cameron’s daughter, Nancy.

“For the president to engage with the next generation is important — not necessarily because he’s going to convince them, but because he’s got to engage them and make sure they turn out,” said Karen Donfried, Obama’s former European adviser at the National Security Council and now head of the German Marshall Fund.

Messina, who helped run the Tories’ successful general election campaign last year, is acting as a part-time middle man between Number 10 and the White House, as well as providing polling numbers to help target undecided voters. Cameron re-enlisted Messina this year to help the pro-EU campaign.

“So much of PR is bullshit,” the same Number 10 source told POLITICO. “But his strength is data. He’s able to actually provide some evidence for what he’s saying. He’s helping us with floating voters.”

Almost four in 10 voters have yet to make up their mind about which way to vote in June, according the latest poll. The challenge is locking in the undecideds.

Grabbing attention

Obama will keep a full schedule aimed at dominating Britain’s attention. He’s traveling to London with First Lady Michelle Obama. They will have lunch with the Queen at Windsor Castle on Friday.

After talks with Cameron later Friday, the Obamas will join the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry for dinner in London.

Following the town hall Saturday, the Obamas will go on a “cultural visit.” Obama could see Corbyn Saturday afternoon.

By the time Obama leaves on Sunday, Downing Street hopes the months of planning were worth it.

In negotiating the president’s visit last year, the White House offered Number 10 at least two options — either this month, or in July to coincide with the NATO conference in Warsaw, when Obama will be in Europe anyway.

Aware that the July visit would come too late to influence the referendum, Cameron pushed for April.

After all, Obama already had a trip to Germany in the diary, to open the Hannover Messe trade fair with Chancellor Angela Merkel, so he could bolt-on a stop in Britain to say happy 90th birthday to the Queen — and to help keep Britain in Europe while he’s at it.