Blair warns of Brexit ‘folly’

It will be regretted for generations, he says

LONDON: Former British prime minister Tony Blair yesterday warned voters that time was running out to reverse Brexit, a folly he said would torpedo Britain’s remaining clout and be regretted for generations to come.

More than a year and a half since the 2016 Brexit vote, the UK remains deeply divided over the planned EU exit that Prime Minister Theresa May says will take place on March 29 next year.

Both opponents and supporters of Brexit agree that the divorce is Britain’s most significant geopolitical move since World War II, though they cast vastly different futures for the $2.5 trillion (almost R31 trillion) UK economy and its relation with the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Blair, Labour prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said Britain would be poorer, weaker and warned that May had solved none of the problems over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit status.

“We are making an error the contemporary world cannot understand and the generations of the future will not forgive,” Blair said in an article published on his website yesterday.

“2018 will be the last chance to secure a say on whether the new relationship proposed with Europe is better than the existing one,” Blair, 64, said.

Leaving the EU was once far-fetched: just over 15 years ago, British leaders such as Blair were arguing about when to join the euro, and talk of an EU exit was the reserve of sceptics on the fringes of both major parties.

But the turmoil of the euro zone crisis, fears in Britain about immigration and a series of miscalculations by former prime minister David Cameron prompted the UK to vote 52% to 48% for Brexit in a June 2016 referendum.

Blair has called for the reversal of Brexit, echoing other opponents of Brexit such as French President Emmanuel Macron and billionaire investor George Soros, who have suggested that Britain could still change its mind. Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the EU and a majority think the government may be paying too much money to the EU to open the way to trade talks.

Supporters of Brexit dismissed Blair’s stance. “Blair and his elitist gang are damaging our negotiating strength, thus damaging our national interest by their continuing efforts to undermine democracy,” said Richard Tice, who helped found one of the two Leave campaign groups.