Boris Johnson is failing to convince us that his Brexit campaign is about more than xenophobia

According to Boris, Obama's 'colonial angst' means he's plotting to destroy Britain in the cruellest way possible - keeping us in the EU

Boris Johnson says that Obama maintains an “ancestral dislike” of the British Empire (Getty Images)

Boris Johnson has come out with some pretty outlandish crap lately. You can’t even mention Europe without the guy instinctively regurgitating a load of tosh about draconian EU balloon regulations that don’t actually exist. You just sort of learn to drown it out, really.

But this week, BoJo has utterly redefined paranoia by insinuating that Barack Obama wants to see Britain leaving the EU because of his Kenyan heritage. Where do you even begin to unravel the craziness?

According to Boris, the British people should completely ignore anything and everything President Obama has to say about June’s impending EU referendum because he’s part-Kenyan and thus maintains an “ancestral dislike” of the British Empire. As a result of his alleged colonial angst, Obama is now plotting to destroy Britain in the cruelest way he could possibly fathom: by keeping us in the EU.

What a bloody farce. Not only does this sort of rhetoric completely marginalise all of Johnson’s half-arsed attempts to convince UK voters that the Brexit campaign is not one rooted in xenophobia, but it uses sheer buffoonery as a means to silence pluralism.

Over the past few months, a whole lot of global figures have come out in support of Britain staying in the EU. Yet every time revered global economists or overseas politicians raise extremely valid concerns about the potential ramifications of a Brexit, BoJo and his mates have always got the same, smarmy response armed and ready: ‘mind your own business’.

On one hand, it’s easy to see where they’re coming from. Barack Obama doesn’t get to vote in the EU referendum, and he’s not British – so why would he even bother talking about it? On the other hand, it’s pretty damn obvious why he would bother.

Never mind our so-called ‘Special Relationship’ or the emotional blackmail of World War II. There are almost 200,000 US citizens currently living and working in the UK. As a frame of reference, that’s more people than the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats have got put together. Yet because a vast majority of those individuals aren’t allowed to vote on June 23, their lives may soon be turned upside-down thanks to the manipulative will of Britain’s closet-racists and economic sadists.

Guys like Barack Obama owe it to those US citizens to do everything he can to help protect their interests. On a less personal level, Obama is also totally obliged to speak up for the 327,000 British jobs and $558bn worth of investments that rely exclusively on US companies.

Say what you want about the evils of cultural imperialism, NATO or cappuccinos at Starbucks – but you can’t diminish the fact that the US is by far one of Britain’s biggest foreign shareholders. And when you decide to try and liquidate a huge multinational, you can’t silence a non-voting shareholder just because that person disagrees with you.

This EU question is one that's got to be answered by the British people. That’s obvious. Yet Boris Johnson and his newfound UKIP friends have got a ridiculously huge set of balls to try and eradicate the voices of other concerned parties just because those voices don’t have posh, London accents. After all, the MPs and newspapers moaning at Barack Obama to ‘mind his own business’ are the exact same English Muppets who did their damnedest to try and intervene in the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014.

Guys like BoJo love to go on about how undemocratic the EU is. Yet based upon their own childish attempts to alienate every single voice they disagree with, I'd hate to see the type of democracy Brexiteers would seek to create here in the UK.

Listen: if you want to argue that Britain should leave the EU, that’s fine. Go for it. But if this sort of “ancestral dislike” garbage is the best you can do, just shut up. The rest of us would like to have a grown-up debate, thanks.