In an interview with the New Statesman, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced his return to political activity, where he intends to build a platform to help the “millions of politically homeless people in Britain”.
Blair said that he wants to “create the space for a political debate about where modern western democracies go and where the progressive forces particularly find their place.”
His first and foremost issue with the current political environment lies with Brexit, where he described June’s referendum as being like agreeing to a house swap “without having seen the other house”.
Discussing the options for leaving the EU, Blair said:
“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.”
The former Prime Minister went on to express his hopes for reversing this June’s referendum.
“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,” he said.
Blair then went on to discuss the recent US election, saying that he understood the appeal to the Republican’s stance to the threats from Islamic terrorist and that the Democrats were too cautious.
“What is very instructive is to go look at the Democratic platform for that election and look at the Republican one – leave aside Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Just look at those two platforms and you’ll see what the problem is.
“For example, when it comes to a discussion of radical Islam and the Islamist threat, the Democrats felt that, for reasons I completely understand, that if you talked about it in that language, the general prevailing sense is that you were then stigmatising all Muslims.
“I don’t personally agree with that. I think that you’re perfectly able to distinguish between Islamists and Muslims. But there is a threat that is based on the perversion of religion, and you should acknowledge it as such in my view.
“Whereas the Republicans had a whole section that was all about that. Again, if you’re looking at America and how they feel about things, what they feel is that the liberal left is unwilling to have a discussion about these things.”