Johnson blasts former British PM for Brexit remarks

The British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has lambasted former premier Tony Blair for urging opponents of Brexit to “rise up” against leaving the European Union (EU).

In a speech delivered in London on Friday, the former Labour prime minister said, "The people voted without knowledge of the terms of Brexit," and suggested that "as the terms become clear it is their right to change their mind — our mission is to persuade them to do so."

In response to his remarks, Johnson censured Blair’s “bare-faced effrontery” and accused him of arrogance and insulting the intelligence of those who had voted to leave the 28-member bloc.

"Now he has the bare-faced effrontery to tell the British people that they were wrong last June. He is showing contempt for the intelligence of the electorate," he said. "I call on the British people to rise up and turn off the TV when Tony Blair next appears with his condescending campaign."

Johnson, who was speaking at a G20 foreign ministers summit in the German city of Bonn, also took a swipe at the former premier’s policies regarding the European single currency and Iraq war.

"Whatever his merits as a former prime minister, [Tony Blair] is the guy who would have taken our country into the Euro with what would have been catastrophic consequences; this is the guy who dragooned the United Kingdom into the Iraq War on a completely false prospectus with consequences which foreign ministers here [at the G20 summit] are still trying to deal with," he said.

In his scathing speech, Blair condemned the government of Theresa May for taking the country out of the EU “at any cost,” saying, "The Prime Minister and her Government are not masters of this situation, they are not driving the bus. They are being driven."

He called on ignoring the referendum result because of growing evidence that the costs of divorce from the EU were greater than they had seemed.

SS