Arch-remainer Tony Blair has leapt on the decisive victory of the Brexit Party in Sunday’s European Union election count as a clear sign that the United Kingdom needs a second referendum and to vote to cancel Brexit, keeping the country in the EU.
Speaking in an in-studio with Sky News’s Adam Boulton the Iraq war architect, New Labour leader, and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair reacted to the Brexit Party’s sudden surge from being founded as a new force to coming first in a national election in just 45 days by dismissing the concerns of their voters, claiming that a desire for Brexit itself is based on a “myth”.
Dismissing any attempt at a Brexit compromise, the globalist politician — who has previously called for the referendum to be re-run because voters failed to reach the right conclusion the first time around — said:
…compromise just doesn’t work because those people who voted for Nigel Farage and voted for Brexit want out of that trading system, that is integral to their case… if you are a Labour party politician and you’re worried you’re haemorrhaging votes to the Brexit party because you’ve not been clear about Brexit, and you’ve come out with a soft Brexit which the Brexiteers say is a betrayal you’re going to be no better off.
In fact, you’ll be worse off because you’ve alienated the people who want to remain from the Labour Party, but you won’t have given those people in traditional working class Labour seats who voted Brexit any reason to come back to Labour… there isn’t a Brexit compromise. There are two ways to resolve this, a sensible way and a not sensible way.
Those remaining options, he said, were staying in the European Union completely or leaving completely.
Blair also remarked on the present media narrative that the Brexit party coming first in the election didn’t imply any sort of overwhelming desire by the British people to see the 2016 referendum respected because if you added the votes of other smaller parties together in a fictional coalition, the Brexit party no longer came first. The political veteran claimed: “what these results tell you is this country is profoundly divided.”
A dedicated European Union loyalist, Mr Blair has campaigned and agitated for a second referendum consistently since the first in 2016 delivered a result disagreeable to the British political establishment. Blair told Boulton it was foolish of the then Conservative government to give the people a vote on the European Union at all as one of the potential outcomes — leaving the bloc– was one they didn’t want to deliver anyway.
Despite that, another referendum to cancel the first is now a likely, and desirable outcome he said. Mr Blair told Sky: “you know the position I hold. I think it is more likely now that we will have another referendum, and more likely therefore that we will vote to stay in the European Union.
“But I think we live in an era of unique unpredictability and there are so many different variable factors before we reach that point. But the only way you are ever going to bring this country back together is a reasonable process to decide whether we really want to leave Europe, or if we want to stay.”
While the Labour party which he once led is clamouring for a Fresh general election in the wake of the failure of Theresa May to lead the country, and their comfortably beating the Conservatives in the polls, Mr Blair had some advice for the government if they were considering calling a fresh election to fix the parliamentary arithmetic that has been blocking Brexit so far. Referring to the punishment voters are giving to the Conservatives at the polls for having failed on Brexit, Mr Blair warned: “the Conservatives would be certifiably insane to do a general election in the shadow of Brexit.”
The pronouncements on Brexit and British politics from the former Prime Minister come shortly after his own failed attempt to influence the outcome of the European elections, which have seen populist and nationalist parties enjoy gains across the continent. Writing in the Guardian in early May, Mr Blair pleaded with voters to reject Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which eventually came first in the poll.
Mr Blair wrote then: “If you care about what the Brexiters are doing to our country, then vote on 23 May… All that matters is that on 24 May, Nigel Farage and his allies on the far right of the Conservative party cannot claim they speak for Britain.”
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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