UK elections: Tony Blair to attack David Cameron over EU referendum

Blair will say leaving the EU would leave Britain “diminished in the world”, adding that he “respects” Miliband for putting the “interests of the country first”.

Tony Blair
Tony Blair

Tony Blair will enter the election campaign later with an attack on David Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership.

The former PM will accuse Cameron of trading national interest for political advantage under pressure from UKIP and anti-European Conservatives and media.

Blair will say Labour’s Ed Miliband has shown “real leadership” by resisting pressure over a referendum.

But the Tories said Blair wanted to “deny the people their say” on the EU.

Blair won general elections as Labour leader in 1997, 2001 and 2005, and stood down as prime minister in 2007.

Speaking in his former constituency of Sedgefield in County Durham later, Blair will say a possible EU exit would leave a “pall of unpredictability hanging over the British economy”.

“And the oddest thing of all about David Cameron’s position? The PM doesn’t really believe we should leave Europe; not even the Europe as it is today,” he will say.

“This was a concession to party, a manoeuvre to access some of the UKIP vote, a sop to the rampant anti-Europe feeling of parts of the media.

“This issue, touching as it does the country’s future, is too important to be traded like this.”

Blair will say leaving the EU would leave Britain “diminished in the world”, adding that he “respects” Miliband for putting the “interests of the country first”.

In a statement, the Conservative Party said: “David Cameron has stood up for Britain in Europe – securing a cut in the EU budget, vetoing a new EU Fiscal Treaty that didn’t guarantee a level playing field for British business, and getting British taxpayers out of bailing out the euro.

“Only the Conservatives have a plan for Britain’s settlement in the EU: to undergo a renegotiation of this relationship, so that it works for Britain, and to put the outcome of that renegotiation to the British people in an in-out referendum by the end of 2017.”

Cameron, who will visit all four nations of the UK on Tuesday, said he had a “simple message: we have one month to save our economy from the disaster of an Ed Miliband government”.

Elsewhere, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg will visit north-west England and mid Wales later.

UKIP’s Nigel Farage will be making campaign visits in England.