Remain voters must 'mobilise' to ensure Britain stays in the EU:Tony Blair

 
Pic: Ex,Prime Minister  Tony Blair
Political reporter(wp/es):
Tony Blair has urged Remain voters to "mobilise" in order to "prise apart the alliance which gave us Brexit" and ensure Britain stays in the EU.
The former prime minister said while the will of the people should be respected, Remain voters are "the insurgents now" and "have to believe in the people's innate sense, that they're also open to a better argument in the light of the facts as they come to light".
Writing in the New European newspaper, Mr Blair said as the "catastrophic" realities of leaving take hold, staying in must remain an option.
He highlighted the sharp fall in the pound as a "negative prediction about our economic future", and the blocking of a Canada-EU free trade deal by the Walloon regional parliament in Belgium as evidence that Brexit may not take the form many Leave voters had imagined.

Brexit-backing politicians are now openly acknowledging that leaving means freeing Britain from its "essential social democratic" model, including a free NHS, he said.
In its place they envisage "free market, free trading, light regulation, low tax, low social protection" like in city states Hong Kong and Singapore - something which not all Leave voters would back.
He wrote: "The issue is not whether we ignore the will of the people, but whether, as information becomes available, and facts take the place of claims, the 'will' of the people shifts.
"Maybe it won't, in which case people like me will have to accept it.
"But surely we are entitled to try to persuade, to make the argument, and not to be whipped into line to support a decision we genuinely believe is a catastrophe for the country we love."

He also warned that anger and anxiety about immigration, globalisation, stagnant incomes, housing and squeezed public services will only get worse outside the EU.
He added: "We have to recognise we're the insurgents now. We have to build the capability to mobilise and to organise.
"We have to prise apart the alliance which gave us Brexit."