Tony Blair believes that Brexit can be halted. “It can be stopped if the British people decide that, having seen what it means, the pain-gain cost-benefit analysis doesn’t stack up. And that can happen in one of two ways. I’m not saying it will [be stopped], by the way, but it could. I’m just saying: until you see what it means, how do you know?”
Attempting to secure access to the single market will be the defining negotiation. “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. People may then say, ‘Well, hang on, why are we leaving then?’ Or 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.”
But, I suggest, the Remain side made numberless dire economic forecasts during the long, dispiriting referendum campaign and they were ignored. The public understands well enough the risks of Brexit.
“But this is what I keep saying to people. This is like agreeing to a house swap without having seen the other house . . . You’ve got to understand, this has been driven essentially ideologically. You’ve got a very powerful cartel of the media on the right who provided the platform for the Brexiteers who allied themselves with the people in the Tory party who saw a chance to run with this. And, OK, they ended up in circumstances where there was a very brutal but not particularly enlightening campaign. They won that campaign.”
He pauses to reach for his coffee cup.
“But in the end, for a large number of the people, even those who voted Leave, they will look at this in a practical way, not an ideological way. And all I’m saying is: what shows you how ideological this is is that when I say, ‘Well, let’s just keep our options open,’ it’s condemned as treason. Why wouldn’t you keep your options open? Why wouldn’t you say, ‘We took this decision, we took it before we saw what its consequences are; now we see its consequences, we’re not so sure’?
“I think, in the end, it’s going to be about parliament and the country scrutinising the deal. So, for example, the deal that was done with Nissan” – to persuade the Japanese carmaker to expand its production in Sunderland after Brexit – “I don’t know what the terms of that deal are, but we should know. Because that will tell us a lot about what they’re prepared to concede in order to keep access to the single market.”
