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TONY Blair has claimed the only way to make a success of Brexit is to turn Britain into a Singapore-style low-tax, low-regulation country competing with the European Union.
But the former prime minister warned that voters will not back such a huge restructuring of the economy and society, and so Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour is likely to win any post-Brexit election, creating a “serious problem” for the country.
Mr Blair spoke after releasing a paper calling for tough new immigration rules which would allow Britain to exercise more control over who comes into the country, without leaving the EU.
He claimed this would fulfil the will of the people expressed in last year’s Brexit vote while allowing Britain to stay in the EU.
But Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon told him to “get over it” and accept that Brexit is happening.
Mr Blair, however, pleaded with Remain-backing Tory ministers like Sir Michael and other MPs to steer the UK away from a “false path” with a choice between an old fashioned right-wing Brexit or “unreconstructed” leftism.
He told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “I think the only circumstances in which Brexit works, and this is the fantasy of the real Brexiteers – they are in one sense right, that if you leave Europe Britain should become a light-touch, lightregulation ... it should become marketed as ‘not Europe’.
“The risk is the British people won’t vote for that, they are not going to vote for the huge economic and social restructuring – to the changes to the health service and other things that that would require.
“And the risk is actually that we have a Brexit followed by, I’m afraid, an unreconstructed leftist programme from Labour, and if you combine those two things together in my view we will be in a very serious situation as a country.”
He went on: “Yes there’s a lot of anger, but give people an answer.
“There are answers to the anger, there are answers on tuition fees, on social injustice, on communities left behind.
“What should we be dealing with as a country today?
“The technological revolution, infrastructure, making sure that we are geared up to the enormous changes that are coming down the pipe at us.
“Brexit on the one side, anti-business old-fashioned leftist programmes on the other, they may ride the anger but they don’t provide the answer.”
Mr Blair commended the way Mr