Boris and Brexit provide light relief as Obama and Cameron tackle Syria issue

It would be easy to regard Barack Obama’s two-day visit to the UK as one long political broadcast for the Remain camp, all funded off the books by the US taxpayer. 

In private the president might voice doubts about how David Cameron ever managed to get himself into this mess by staging a referendum; Obama is famously pragmatic about the fights he chooses, and he might well have skipped this one. But apart from Brexit, Obama and Cameron have other serious diplomatic discussions ahead on the interconnected and intractable issues of Libya, Syria, Russia, counter-terrorism co-operation and shaping the attack on Mosul, the single largest city held by Islamic State.

In all of these fields – most being prosecuted outside the EU context, but still capable of colouring British voters’ views of the EU’s effectiveness – progress is hard to detect.

In Syria, the Geneva peace talks have effectively foundered, despite the protestations of the UN special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, that they will continue next week. In two extended sessions of talks, the team of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, refused to engage on the issue of a political transition, and the Anglo-American hopes that Russia would press Assad to shift proved ill-founded. Cameron and Obama will collectively need to reassess Vladimir Putin’s sincerity, and certainly insisting on retaining economic sanctions.

On Thursday the White House expressed concern about Russia moving equipment back into Syria, a possible sign that the war was entering a violent new phase and the Russian withdrawal was only a game.

Obama said that if the Syrian ceasefire fails, “none of the options are good”.

“The problem with any plan B that does not involve a political settlement is that it means more fighting, potentially for years,” Obama said while in Saudi Arabia for a security summit with Gulf state leaders. “Whoever comes out on top will be standing on top of a country that’s been devastated and that will then take years to rebuild.”

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, added: “The movement of any additional Russian military support into Syria would be inconsistent with our shared objective of getting a political process moving.”