Tony Blair, who opened Britain’s borders while prime minister, has called for tougher immigration controls as a way to stop Brexit.
The former prime minister — a fervent Remainer who in July declared it “absolutely necessary” that Britain does not leave the EU — said tighter restrictions on immigration from Europe would both fulfil the will of the people who voted in last year’s referendum and allow the UK to remain in the bloc.
“There is no diversion possible from Brexit without addressing the grievances which gave rise to it. Paradoxically, we have to respect the referendum vote to change it,” he writes in a Sunday Times article, which warns Remainers that they must accept “uncomfortable choices.”
Blair presided over a nation-transforming migrant influx during his time as Prime Minister, from both outside of Europe and within, particularly when his government — unlike the majority of EU member-states — neglected to apply transitional controls on migrants from eastern European countries when they joined the bloc in 2004.
His government predicted just 15,000 a year would come, but within two years some 600,000 were in the country, and their resident population is now in the millions.
The heavyweight globalist defended his actions, but said “times were different” now — arguing that public sentiment against mass migration calls for new controls, such as asking that EU migrants have a job offer before coming to Britain.
“My government in 2004 did not invoke the transitional arrangements when eastern Europe joined the EU,” writes Blair.
“Back then the economy was strong, the workers were needed and actually the biggest annual numbers came post-2011.
“But the real point is that the times were different; the sentiment was different; and intelligent politics takes account of such change.”
Along with the proposal that EU nationals should have a job offer when they arrive, a new report by the Iraq War architect’s Institute for Global Change outlined a number of measures to stem the migrant flow, including restricting free healthcare for unemployed migrants.
After taking office in 1997, the Blair government began removing the barriers to migration in a deliberate move which senior aide Andrew Neather recalled was designed to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity” and permanently alter Britain’s ethnic makeup.
A biography of the former prime minister published last year accused him of presiding over a “silent conspiracy” in which ministers were instructed to wave tens of thousands of asylum seekers into the UK under cover of being “economic migrants”, with the goal of forcing demographic and political change that would transform Britain forever.