LONDON: Former British prime minister Tony Blair told voters on Thursday that time was running out to reverse Brexit, a folly that he said would torpedo Britain’s remaining clout and be regretted for generations to come.

More than a year and a half since the 2016 Brexit vote, the United Kingdom remains deeply divided over the planned EU exit that Prime Minister Theresa May says will take place on March 29, 2019.

Both opponents and supporters of Brexit agree that the divorce is Britain’s most significant geopolitical move since World War Two, though they cast vastly different futures for the $2.5 trillion UK economy and the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Blair, Labour prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said Britain would be poorer and weaker, and he warned that May had solved none of the problems over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit status.

“We are making an error the contemporary world cannot understand and the generations of the future will not forgive,” Blair said in an article published on his website on Thursday.

“2018 will be the last chance to secure a say on whether the new relationship proposed with Europe is better than the existing one,” Blair, 64, said.

Leaving the European Union was once far-fetched: just over 15 years ago, British leaders such as Blair were arguing about when to join the euro, and talk of an EU exit was the reserve of sceptics on the fringes of both major parties.

But the turmoil of the euro zone crisis, fears in Britain about immigration and a series of miscalculations by former prime minister David Cameron prompted the United Kingdom to vote 52 to 48 per cent for Brexit in a June 2016 referendum.

Blair has repeatedly called for reversing Brexit, echoing other critics such as French President Emmanuel Macron and billionaire investor George Soros, who have suggested that Britain could still change its mind.

So far, opinion polls show little sign of a change of heart among voters on Brexit and it is unclear how it could be stopped if both major political parties support the divorce.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2018