The US Ambassador in London reaffirmed his country’s backing for the “united form” of the UK as he sought to justify Barack Obama’s controversial intervention to a Dundee audience.
Matthew Barzun said the US President made his comments in 2014 in support of the Union in “the spirit of friendship” as he told a Dundee University event that Washington saw the UK in its current constitutional make-up as preferable “from our perspective”.
But he used the analogy of a marriage break-up to say it was impossible for outsiders to make judgments on the UK’s internal relations.
Mr Barzun told students and academics that he had heard from “lots of people of who were happy (President Obama) was weighing and lots of people who were not”.
“He did it in the spirit of friendship and, hey look, friends should be honest and say what they think,” said Mr Barzun, who is due to step down as the US Ambassador to the UK in January.
“We thought the UK from our perspective is really good in its united form. We work so closely and we mean the same things when we say we want to make the world a more peaceful, more prosperous place.”
But he said they hold that view “knowing that we are not in it”.
“My wife’s a therapist and my mother’s a therapist and one thing you never know when couples come to you and want to split up, you never know what someone else’s marriage is like, you just don’t,” he added.
“It doesn’t mean that you don’t have an opinion. It doesn’t mean when you are asked you don’t say what it is.”
President Obama came under fire from some quarters for saying in June 2014 it was in US interests that the UK remained a “strong, robust, united and effective partner”.
But he said ultimately it was up to those in Scotland to make the decision.
Mr Barzun, who was appointed by President Obama three years ago after helping to run his successful White House campaign in 2008, was giving a speech and taking questions during the Dundee University and Royal Society of Edinburgh talk at Dalhousie Building last night.
Mr Barzun also said the “special relationship” between the US and UK would “absolutely survive” even if a Republican government under Donald Trump took control of the White House.
