UK Edition
Tony Blair confirms he is trying to reverse Brexit as he issues Ireland warning
Tony Blair said on Sunday he was trying to reverse Brexit because claims by the leave campaign, such as the National Health Service getting an extra £350 million a week once Britain leaves the EU, have been proved false.
The former prime minister told the BBC that the government aims in the Brexit negotiations will fail because it wants to leave the single market, but retain all of the benefits, and voters can change their minds.
"It's reversible. It's not done until it's done," he said, rejecting the argument that he was defying the will of the people. "When the facts change, I think people are entitled to change their mind."
Asked if his purpose in relation to Brexit was to reverse it, Blair replied: “Yes, exactly so.”
Mr Blair warned that the European Union could not allow the continued free flow of goods across the Irish border if Britain was outside the single market and the customs union.
He said the UK could, if it choses, permit the free movement of people between Northern Ireland and the Republic to continue - although it would make a "nonsense" of the argument Britain was leaving to take back control of its borders.
However he said that it would be a different matter as far as Brussels was concerned when it came to goods and services.
"Here's the thing that I don't think is fully understood yet by the British negotiators," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One.
"When it comes to freedom of movement of people, if the British want to turn a blind eye to that, fine, the Europeans won't mind about that. It makes a nonsense of the idea that you are protecting your borders.
"But when it comes to the free movement of goods then Europe has a direct interest in that. If there is a hard border the European Union will say the same rules must apply as applies to any other hard border with the European Union."
The only alternative, he said, was a "bespoke" deal specifically for Northern Ireland, separate from the rest of the UK, but that was unlikely to prove acceptable to unionists.
Mr Blair, who helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, acknowledged that Britain's decision to leave the EU was "problematic" for the peace process.
"One of the elements that was central to the Good Friday Agreement was that because the UK and the Republic of Ireland were both in the Europe Union it was easy to have arrangements which gave expression to the nationalist feelings in the North," he said.
"Free movement of people, free movement of goods, an open border was one part of that expression that the island of Ireland was together, even though strictly and constitutionally one part was in the UK, one part was in the Republic of Ireland.
"If you end up with a hard border, obviously that causes tensions. It doesn't mean that you should abandon the Good Friday Agreement, but it poses real challenges to it."
Mr Blair's comments came as a poll found half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the European Union and a majority think the government may be paying too much money to the EU to open the way to trade talks.
The poll, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, found 50 percent of people supported another vote on the final terms of Britain's exit deal, 34 percent rejected another referendum and 16 percent said they did not know.
It was the first major opinion poll since The Telegraph revealed Britain was preparing to pay between €45bn and €55bn to help to move on to talks on a future trade pact with the EU.
Mike Smithson, an election analyst who runs the www.politicalbetting.com website and a former Liberal Democrat politician, said on Twitter it was "the first time any pollster has recorded backing" for a second Brexit referendum.
According to the Survation poll only 11 percent of voters said Britain should pay £50 billion to quit the EU, while 31 percent said the government should not pay anything at all.
The poll also found 35 percent of those surveyed said they would be worse off financially after Brexit, while 14 percent said they would be better off.
The online poll, carried out by research firm Survation, interviewed 1,003 adults in Britain between 30 November and 1 December.