Brexit failed – and it triggered mass immigration, Tony Blair says

Sir Tony Blair has delivered the most devastating critique of the failure of Brexit and how consequently Britain has ended up with mass immigration instead of the promise to “take back control”.

“We’ve swapped out younger, usually single people coming in from Europe to work in hospitality, technology and other sectors for much increased immigration from Asia and Africa,” he said.

In an exclusive interview with Geordie Greig, editor-in-chief of The Independent, Sir Tonyhighlighted the way “we have weakened ourselves” in the UK as a result of Brexit.

Watch the Blair interview in full on Independent TV

Britain’s most successful prime minister of the 21st century lambasted the Tories for “putting politics before policy” over 14 years, which led to a period of instability not seen since Margaret Thatcher won power in 1979. He said the Tories had perverted Thatcherism into a kind of nationalism through extreme Euroscepticism.

In a wide-ranging interview, following the publication of his book On Leadership, he highlighted:

Sir Tony urged Sir Keir Starmer to “repair the relationship” with the EU as he warned that Western leaders must prepare for a potential global war in a world destabilised by the tension between America and China, and a “delusional” Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sir Tony’s priority has always been to underpin UK influence by being “America’s closest ally”, with a strong role in the European Union and peddling soft power through international aid. He sees an urgent need to repair the relationship with the EU in a world that some close to him believe is now in a potential pre-war scenario.

“We need to think how we repair the relationship with the EU, and then in time, we’ve got to think as a country of