Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Blair conceded that while the clock was ticking to the March 2019 deadline when the UK is due to exit the EU, he remains optimistic the EU referendum vote will still be overcome.
He warned, however, that immigration was a key concern for the public throughout the EU, not just in the UK, and that the EU would have to produce a comprehensive immigration plan for there to be any chance of a second vote in the UK on EU membership.
In a wide-ranging speech at an event organised by the European Policy Centre, he said, “Some people say this is a Don Quixote exercise and that it will not be possible to change the outcome of the vote in 2016.
“But I believe the debate in the UK is only just starting to open up and we have got to find ways of averting Brexit - which is going to cause a lot of damage both to the UK and EU.”
He added, “If I was still Labour leader I would be hammering the Tories every day on the destructiveness of the UK leaving the EU.”
He said that any prospect of avoiding Brexit rested on three key elements, including demonstrating to British people that “what they were told in 2016 is far more complex and costly than they thought.”
Another key obstacle to be overcome, he told the audience, will be “showing that there are different and better ways” of responding to the underlying causes and reasons why a majority of Brits voted to leave the EU.
A third leg, he argued, rests on the EU side in accepting that the vote to leave was a “wake up call” for it to change and reform.
Blair, who has established an ‘Institute for Global Change’ and was taking part in an EPC ‘Thought leadership forum’, said that securing a second vote or reversing the decision “will require all three legs to succeed.”
Blair, who won three successive elections for Labour, the only party leader to do so in its history, focused on the economic and political loss to the EU of the UK leaving the bloc.
As the EU’s second largest economy outside Germany, he said the loss of a UK exit to the EU should not be underestimated.
As the EU will lose one of its economic heavyweights, Brexit will, he cautioned, also reduce the effectiveness of the single market.
But the ability for cross-border cooperation in areas like tackling global warming would also suffer, he said, adding, “do we seriously believe that the achievements made in addressing this or in driving the issue would have been better done as individual countries rather than at EU level?”
Blair also admitted that if Brexit does go ahead, it could cause “real strains” within the UK itself and, with the rise of populist parties in other member states pushing for a similar complete break from Brussels could also mean Europe becoming a “focus for disunity.”
“The anxieties felt by the British who voted to leave the EU were not specific to them but are widely felt all over Europe,” he said.
“And the populism which is convulsing Europe at present needs, first, to be understood before it can be defeated.”
He added that because Brexit “is a momentous and life changing event”, the British people should be given a final say on the agreement reached by the EU and UK negotiators.
He told an audience, which included several MEPs, “If this can be averted I will continue to fight passionately for such an outcome.”