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Welcome to The View from 22 podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman, the spectator's assistant editor.

In this week's issue, we'll be discussing Barack Obama's intervention in the Brexit debate,

David Cameron's Pyrrhic victory over Europe and on the 400th

anniversary of Shakespeare's death, asking just how did the bard kick the bucket? On to our first topic,

12 years ago, Barack Obama captured the American imagination with a speech in which he pledged to unite

a divided country. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the

United States of America. In his cover story this week, Tim Montgomery says that Obama has done

the exact opposite and that his divisive behavior has led directly to the fist-shaking of

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Now the president is coming to Britain, apparently to give his blessing to the EU

Remain campaign. But will it work? I'm joined now by my colleague Freddie Gray and the telegraphs

Janet Daly to discuss. Janet Daly, why shouldn't the US president have a view on the European

referendum? Oh, he's perfectly entitled to have a view and he should express it at home. I don't

know what possessed Cameron. I assume it was Cameron, to think this was a clever idea,

but it's going to be almost entirely counterproductive.

The British don't like being lectured by foreign leaders anyway about how they should vote.

And given that Obama's weakest point over the two administrations has been his foreign policy,

I'd have thought this would be the last thing in the world that he would want to be making a recommendation on for any other

country. Freddie Gray, isn't it the case that Obama's much more popular over here than he is in

America? So he might as well come over here where he's got a little bit of rock star appeal still.

There's a little bit of truth in that. But I think the really sad thing about this week is that Cameron and Osborne still buy into this Obama brand of 2008 that just

isn't real anymore. And it's certainly true that he still has sort of element of cool among the sort

...