Former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is to deliver a speech to the European Policy Center in Brussels on Thursday in which he is to call on the European Union to tighten its immigration controls as a way of changing the British public's mind and helping "Remain" supporters in the United Kingdom halt its exit from the EU.
On March 1 in a radio interview with BBC Radio4, Mr. Blair said it was "sickening" that "Leave" supporters were willing to sacrifice the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland "on the altar of Brexit."
#TonyBlair you are deluded. David Cameron already sought concessions when he 'renegotiated' (tweaked) the UK's membership of the #EuropeanUnion in 2016. This delivered next to nothing and certainly not enough to dissuade Brits from voting for #Brexit. EU won't give any more.
— NO SELL-OUT BREXIT (@UK_VOTED_LEAVE) 1 марта 2018 г.
The ex-Labour leader's intervention comes just a day after his predecessor as PM, Conservative John Major and a fellow Remainer insisted that the British Parliament must be prepared to hold a second referendum on EU membership in the event that Prime Minister Theresa May's final deal is rejected by the House of Commons later in the year.
Waning Influence
Tony Blair has made repeated forays into the public debate over the UK's divorce from the EU and is among the strongest political advocates of rerunning the original referendum or simply ignoring the result.
The fortunes of "New Labour" took a hit in September 2015 with the rise of current leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose positions tilt more towards the traditional socialist policies of the party from before the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
Corbyn's attitudes to the European Union have been far more ambivalent than the likes of Mr. Blair, earning him hostility from many of his colleagues, including nearly his entire shadow front-bench which tried to unseat him as leader after the June 2016 referendum result.
In a speech on February 26, Mr. Corbyn gave a speech promising that a Labour Government would keep Britain in the EU Customs Union but not the Single Market, which prohibits government subsidies to industries such as steel which the Labour intends to support when in government.
