Fury over Blair Brexit call
urged pro-Europeans: “This is not the time for retreat, indifference or despair but the time to rise up in defence of what we believe.”
He claimed Mrs May was already being driven into a damaging “hard Brexit”, that the EU issue would leave her government no time to focus on daily life issues and that the reality would disappoint voters who thought Brexit meant much lower immigration.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in Munich for a security conference, said: “It really is insulting the intelligence of the electorate to say that they got it wrong.
“Tony Blair is the guy who would have taken our country into the euro with what would have been catastrophic consequences, who dragooned the UK into the Iraq war on a completely false prospectus with consequences which foreign ministers here are still trying to deal with.
“To those who call for the British people to ‘rise up’ against Brexit, I urge the British people to rise up and turn off the TV next time Blair comes on with his condescending campaign.”
Leave campaigner and former education secretary Michael Gove said: “Politicians like Tony Blair should respect the result and work with the Government to make a success of Brexit instead of trying to undermine British democracy.”
Fellow Tory former minister and Leave campaigner Iain Duncan Smith said Mr Blair had no right to “come back into British politics and then lecture the British people and bully and cajole them, to tell them that until they make the ‘right’ decision they will keep on being asked the same question.
“His view is that the British people were too stupid to understand the decision they were making, which I find rather arrogant.”
Patronising
Labour MP and leading Brexit backer Kate Hoey tweeted: “Patronising speech from Tony Blair. Makes me more determined to ensure decision of the British people to Leave is fulfilled.”
Even Lucy Thomas, the former deputy director of the Stronger In referendum Remain campaign, tweeted in response to Mr Blair’s “rise up” call: “Not all former Remain campaigners agree with this. Brexit was democratic vote and need to work for best possible version, not fight it.”