No wonder the Outers are up in arms today. While I didn’t see Obama’s speech, I just read this Guardian account of it. He burst so many bubbles, dashed so many of their fanciful hopes, that they have little choice other than to try to play it down. I, on the other hand, think Obama spoke a lot of truth: leaving the EU would lessen Britain; we would go from being a prime player in a community of nations to an inwards-looking, irrelevant little nation who cut itself off from it’s main trading partner. Far from trading directly with countries like america, we’d largely be ignored: America et al would just forget about us and deal directly with Europe. This isn’t to try to play down Britain, but to simply state quite an obvious truth. The outers can try to dismiss Obama’s intervention all they like – some of their comments get pretty close to racism – but it doesn’t change anything. His advice is valid and sound: stay in the EU and remain an active participant in world affairs; leave it, and become an irrelevance.