Top tory Tebbit slams 'anti-BP' Obama

This Is Money ^ | 10 June 2010, 9:10am | By Jason Groves and David Gardner

[11th_VA]

Lord Tebbit has hit out at Barack Obama's anti-BP rhetoric, calling it 'despicable' and adding to pressure on David Cameron to intervene.

The Prime Minister is facing growing calls to defend the British-based multinational amid claims it is being made a scapegoat for the US oil spill.

Lord Tebbit, a former trade secretary, suggested the President was attacking BP to distract from his administration's impotence.

Writing on his website, he said Mr Obama's attitude was explicable but 'despicable'.

He went on: 'The whole might of American wealth and technology is displayed as utterly unable to deal with the disastrous spill - so what more natural than a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance against a multinational company?'

Mr Obama came under further attack from financial experts, who accused him of threatening British pension investments in BP.

Echoing the president's own pledge last month to keep his 'boot on the throat' of BP to make sure it met the costs of the spill, Mark Dampier, of financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown, said the President actually had 'his boot on the throat of British pensioners'.

'Obama is obviously trying to show how tough he is but the trouble is he can't really do anything,' said Mr Dampier. What's going on in the Gulf is pretty horrible. But he is playing politics and I don't think it's a very helpful game.

'Most British companies hold BP shares in our pension funds, so a dividend cut is not great news.'

The rising anger was also reflected on the other side of the Atlantic. The US Senate has called in beleaguered BP boss Tony Hayward to give evidence before a Senate committee next week.

It follows comments 24 hours earlier from Mr Obama that he would not employ Mr Hayward in light of comments made by the BP boss that he wanted his 'life back'.

BP's share price lost another 4.1% in the UK yesterday, leaving the company's market value at just over £ 73bn. In the US, its share price fell to a 14-year low of $29.20.

Lord Tebbit pointed out that US engineering giant Halliburton was also involved in the events leading up to the Gulf disaster.

And he added: 'It is time that our American friends were reminded that they sang a different tune when the American company Union Carbide killed many thousands of Indians at Bhopal. Not to mention when the American company Occidental killed 167 people on a North Sea oil rig in 1988.

'At the very least, the President might acknowledge that the company directly responsible for the Gulf disaster was American, not British. He may be holding on to some Democratic Party votes, but he is storing up a great deal of ill will that he might regret at some time.'

The Foreign Office denied reports that BP had formally asked the British Embassy in Washington to intervene with the Obama administration in a bid to tone down its rhetoric.

The row is threatening to cast a shadow on Anglo-American relations and the 'special relationship'.

Asked about Mr Obama's references to the firm as 'British Petroleum' - a name it has not used for years - a spokesman for Mr Cameron said: 'I don't think the PM wants to comment but I think it is a fact that BP is a global company.'

[11th_VA]

How long before someone in Britain sues Obama for libel ...

[bushpilot1]

“a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance against a multinational company?”

The Lord forgot usurper.

[bushpilot1]

“a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance against a multinational company?”

The Lord forgot usurper.

[DB]

“At the very least, the President might acknowledge that the company directly responsible for the Gulf disaster was American, not British.”

If the stories are true that a BP boss forced the drilling crew to do something they were dead set against doing then BP is directly the cause.

[11th_VA]

Regardless, (to paraphrase Biden), this is a big %U&!@*^ deal ...

[counterpunch]

Heckuva job, Barry!

[Recovering_Democrat]

I’d like to buy Lord Tebbit a beer.

[Carley]

Cameron seems as weak and feckless as O.

[Vanders9]

They have A responsibility for sure. No one is arguing otherwise (although Tebbit comes close here). But they do not have SOLE responsibility. Why, for example, are they drilling so far out, where if something does go wrong it is so incredibly hard to fix? Because the Democrat party (prop. the green movement) won't let them drill inshore or on land.