Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Tony Blair’s shrill Brexit warnings won’t persuade anyone

Tony Blair’s message for voters on Brexit is becoming more and more shrill. His latest stark warning is that:

‘2018 will be the year when the fate of Brexit and thus of Britain will be decided. 2017 was too early in the negotiation. By 2019, it will be too late.’

The point Blair misses is that 2016 was the year ‘the fate of Brexit’ was decided, and it is difficult not to think that with each pronouncement fewer and fewer people are listening (Blair has an approval rating of –50, according to YouGov). The former Prime Minister – in the news again this morning having denied reports he told the Trump team they had been spied on by British intelligence – popped up on the Today programme to persuade voters it is not too late to change their minds about the referendum. His performance is unlikely to make any one have a rethink.

What Blair calls his ‘simple’ argument is that democracy doesn’t just begin and end on one day.

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