Fateful O'Hare Airport pizza meeting sealed Brexit vote deal: British media

If you're looking for something to blame for the chaos unleashed on world markets Friday by Britain's vote to leave the European Union, consider Chicago pizza — at least if you believe the British press.

London's Financial Times and other British media reported that during a meeting at a pizzeria at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in May 2012, British Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to grant voters a referendum on Europe.

Cameron — who'd urged his countrymen to vote to stay in the EU — resigned Friday morning after the shocking result triggered the value of the British pound to plunge to its lowest rate in 30 years.

But he might have saved his career, and the union, had he skipped sharing a pizza with his foreign secretary, William Hague, and chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, according to the Financial Times and other British media.

Cameron and his team were in Chicago to meet with other world leaders at a NATO summit that saw protesters clash with the police in the streets, when they grabbed a minute at the airport to discuss domestic concerns, according to several British publications.

In a concession to the Euroskeptic wing of his Conservative Party that helped him win Britain's 2015 general election, he made the "fateful decision" over pizza to grant a referendum before 2017, the Financial Times reported.

Chicago Aviation Department spokesman Owen Kilmer said early Friday that Cameron was whisked straight from his private flight into a vehicle that took him downtown and that NATO summit security measures meant that "he was never in any of the terminals at O'Hare ... when he arrived or when he departed." But at least two witnesses tweeted on May 21, 2012, that they had seen Cameron eating at the airport.

One of the witnesses, British TV reporter Robert Moore, wrote in a blog post a day later that "as I passed through Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the Prime Minister was eating at a fast-food cafe, surrounded by fellow passengers, waiting for an American Airlines flight back to London."

It's unclear where he grabbed a bite. According to a list of vendors, Uno Pizzeria & Grill and the Wolfgang Puck cafe are currently the only vendors serving pizza at Terminal 3, where flights for American Airlines depart. An Uno spokesman could not immediately say whether it hosted Cameron and calls to the Wolfgang Puck concession were not returned.

Cameron's tastes in pizza are known to typically run to the upmarket British chain restaurant Pizza Express, which serves an Italian-style thin crust pizza. But Chicagoans might have enjoyed the ridicule he attracted in Britain last year when he was photographed eating a hot dog with a knife and fork.

Deep dish will now likely be off the menu at 10 Downing Street for a while, at least until Cameron's pro-exit rival Boris Johnson — the bookies' favorite to be Britain's next prime minister — moves in.

kjanssen@tribpub.com

Twitter @kimjnews