EU Referendum


Brexit: is Blair leaving it too late?


25/11/2016




The reincarnation of Tony Blair is much heralded, but with mixed feelings. If he thinks his second coming is going to save the nation for Europhilia, others are taking the view that his presence will strengthen our determination to leave the EU.

Blair himself tells us he is "dismayed by the state of Western politics". But, he adds, he is also incredibly motivated by it. "I think in Britain today, you've got millions of effectively politically homeless people", he says.

He believes Brexit "can be stopped" if British voters decide the "cost-benefit analysis doesn't stack up". Such a turnaround could arise in one of two ways, both of them hinging on negotiations over access to the EU's Single Market, he thinks.

"Either you get maximum access to the single market, in which case you'll end up accepting a significant number of the rules on immigration, on payment into the budget, on the European court's jurisdiction". In this case, people may then say: "Well, hang on, why are we leaving then?"

"alternatively, you’ll be out of the single market and the economic pain may be very great because, beyond doubt, if you do that you'll have years, maybe a decade, of economic restructuring".

Brexit, he says, was 'like agreeing to a house swap without having seen the other house'. And while the referendum campaign was won by the leave side, even those voters would eventually look at this in a practical way, not an "ideological way".

However, while he is launching a defence of the "muscular centre", he says that the "right-wing media" would not allow him to return to front-line politics. "There are elements of the media who would literally move to destroy mode if I tried to do that," he claims.

Instead, he says he is interested in providing "a service" to political leaders, in the form of a technologically-inspired platform. Quite what that means is not yet clear but we do know that he has held private talks with non-leader Nick Clegg, after having had discussions with former Chancellor George Osborne.

Yet, when he approached the current Tim Farron, he was rebuffed, the current Lib-Dem leader, rejecting the offer of a face-to-face meeting with Mr Blair. Mr Farron gave him "short-shrift" and is not interested in a closer political relationship.

Perhaps Mr Farron believes that Blair is planning a break-away party on the lines of the Social Democratic Party of 1981, when four senior Labour Party "moderates", dubbed the "Gang of Four" broke away to form a new party – only to merge with the Liberals to become the Liberal Democrats.

Should this happen, Farron's lacklustre leadership would doubtless be challenged, as one can envisage Blair looking to splinter off Corbyn refugees from the Labour Party, to form a new grouping using the Liberal Democrats as it hub. Tory Europhiles might also be expected to join this new "centre party", ready to challenge the Conservatives in the 2020 election.

All this is an ironic inversion of expectations. Amongst others, Farage always anticipated the Tories splitting and, with a rampant Ukip taking dozens of seats in the Commons, he expected the "Right" to combine with his Ukip MPs to form a new centre right party to take us out of the EU.

Instead, the Ukip electoral ambitions were never realised, the Conservative Party has stayed intact (for the moment) and it is the disillusioned Europhiles who are potentially looking to form a centre-left or "progressive" party to keep us in the EU – or take us back in.

Nothing of this, though, has been declared openly by Mr Blair, whose new organisation launches in the spring. He says it merely intends to analyse why British voters chose Brexit and the populist forces that led to the election of Donald Trump in the United States.

On the other hand, Blair is pushing the thesis that there is a global political vacuum, and his moves to get senior Lib-Dems on side are definitely seen by some as an attempt to galvanise centre ground politics and restore New Labour thinking in the UK.

One wonders whether the recent Branson initiative might also be connected. Although there is no declared connection, the timing is deeply suspicious.

For all that, though, it may be that Blair has left it too late. If he is not intending to launch until the spring, Mrs May will by then be ready to start the Article 50 negotiations and the opportunity to block the notification will have passed (assuming Mrs May wins her Supreme Court appeal).

That leaves the alternative possibility that Blair is playing a longer game, ready to target the 2020 election, when he could present a party which stood on a pro-EU platform, arguing for rejoining the EU. If that is the case, and he really believes the referendum result can be overturned, then Mrs May could be facing a more serious challenge than anything Corbyn has to offer.

The upside is that a robust challenge could have the effect of uniting the Conservative Party, and aligning pro-anti EU politics with left and right. A win for Mrs May under those circumstances could become an affirmation of Brexit, leaving the pro-EU forces completely defeated.

If he is not too late to the party, therefore, Blair could be doing us a favour. Aligning his unpopularity with the EU, he could ensure that there is no chance whatsoever of us returning to the embrace of the EU.