Tony Blair warns Boris Johnson a no-deal Brexit ‘could be catastrophic’ and demands a second referendum on crashing out of Europe without an agreement
- Tony Blair has said Boris Johnson should offer a referendum on Brexit as PM
- The three-time election winner argues the choices should be No Deal or Remain
- It comes as Mr Johnson prepares to move into 10 Downing Street on Wednesday
- Gordon Brown joined the debate warning No Deal would be ‘deeply damaging’
Tony Blair warned No Deal would be ‘catastrophic’
Remain-backing former prime minister Tony Blair has insisted that his presumptive successor should go back to the country to resolve Brexit through a second referendum.
The former Labour leader warned no deal ‘could be catastrophic’, and reissued his call to put Brexit back to a people’s vote – while insisting that the people should not be consulted in a general election.
Meanwhile his immediate successor Gordon Brown joins the fray today on the eve of a Johnson premiership, to issue a grave warning that no deal with be ‘deeply damaging’.
Writing in The Times, Mr Blair warned the inbound PM had three options: to force through no deal in defiance of Parliament, call a general election, or conduct a referendum offering two choices: no deal or remain.
He said: ‘The obvious and right course is to go back to the people in a referendum.’
Mr Blair argued a general election ‘because of the weakness of Labour’ would be ‘unacceptable and deeply damaging’ on the ground that Brexit was chosen in a single-issue referendum and should not be ‘mixed up with the normal business of politics’.
He said Theresa May’s deal failed because her objectives were incompatible, writing: ‘If we leave the European trading arrangements, there will be friction at the [Northern Irish] border. Hence the backstop. It came about precisely for this reason.
‘When Johnson says that no British prime minister should be put in the position of having to choose between leaving the European Union and its trading arrangements, and treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK, he doesn’t seem to appreciate that we have put ourselves in that position.’
Boris Johnson is expected to move into 10 Downing Street this week upon winning the Tory leadership contest
Mr Blair argued there is ‘no prospect’ of the EU reneging on its commitment to Ireland, or reopening the guarantee accepted by the UK government that the Irish border.
He said: ‘The 2016 referendum mandated Brexit, for sure, but not a no-deal Brexit.’
He went on: ‘No one knows with certainty the impact of no-deal for the simple reason that no developed nation has ever left overnight its preferential trading arrangements in this manner.
‘It could be merely very difficult or it could be catastrophic.’
Bu, he said, the Tories should avoid the ‘temptation’ of a general election.
‘Confront people with a choice between Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister and a significant proportion of Remain voters might choose the former over the latter, despite hating Brexit’, the former Labour leader acknowledged.
But he called the idea a ‘ploy’ which would be ‘completely unjustifiable and would shake British politics to its roots’.
Former Labour PM Gordon Brown warned a no deal Brexit could cost the UK up to £100m
Meanwhile Gordon Brown, writing in the Guardian, quoted a civil service forecast of doom for the days following a no deal Brexit: ‘There will be long queues at Dover and by Saturday 2 November many of our motorways will be at a standstill.
‘By that Sunday, food prices will be going up – a 10 per cent rise is latest estimate – and by Monday the pound will be sharply down on its pre-Brexit value.
‘By Tuesday medical drugs from mainland Europe will be less accessible, and a week after Brexit, companies will be complaining that vital stocks and components are not reaching them.’
He said a no deal Brexit could cost the country as much as £100m.