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Author: Will Butterworth

People like blaming Tony Blair for a lot. He is blamed for leading the UK into an illegal and failed war in Iraq. He is blamed for irresponsible levels of spending leading to the financial crisis. He is blamed for turning the Labour Party a Conservative Party in disguise, amongst other things. The question that I want to ask is whether we can blame him for Brexit too?

Back in 2004 the EU welcomed 10 new member states, 7 of them ex-soviet states in Eastern Europe. This was the single largest enlargement of EU in its history and still is. It resulted in the likes of Poland and Slovakia joining the EU. It signalled the creation of a two tier EU. Before 2004 the EU had expanded only to economically strong states, the likes of Sweden, Austria and the UK. However, with the 2004 enlargement a EU accepted relatively poor nations for the first time. The PPP per capita of Lithuania in 2004, for example, was half that of the average for the existing EU states. In addition, Poland had an unemployment rate of 19% in 2004. Enlargement to these countries gave over 74m people the opportunity to live, work and travel freely across the EU.

It was a recipe for mass immigration to the economically strong countries in the EU like Germany, France and the UK. Many countries put up transitionary controls in order to limit the likelihood of mass immigration. Finland had transition controls for two years; France has controls on migrants until 2009; Germany had them right up to 2011. Tony Blair decided that there was no need for the UK put up no controls. I think this was a reckless and irresponsible decision.

The Home Office published a report in 2004 suggesting that net migration to Britain from these countries would be 5,000 to 13,000 a year for 10 years. It was also based on the assumption that other countries would not put up transitional controls. On the back of this report it was decided that transitional controls were not needed. This is opened the British border to 74m. The net figure of migration from these countries to the UK from 2004 to 2012 was 423,000. This actually proved the report to be correct because it suggested that immigration would be 46,000 if Germany imposed transitional controls, it was 50,000.

Tony Blair’s mistakes helped stoke an anti-immigration feeling. A mistake the government led by Gordon Brown realised when it put up controls against immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. In total 2.2m immigrants came to the UK from 1997 to 2010, the equivalent of the city of Birmingham the UK’s second largest city. A level that is unprecedented in the history of the UK. This upturn was fuelled an anti-immigration feeling. It was based on the perception that migration was the source of many everyday problems in Britain. These ranged from a lack of good school places to an overwhelming of the NHS.

This feeling was seen before the Brexit vote too via the rise of UKIP. In the 2001 general election UKIP got 390,563 votes, in 2015 UKIP got 3,881,099 votes. UKIP also won the European Parliamentary election; that was the first time that the Conservatives or Labour had not won UK national election since 1906.

Then in June this year Britain decided by a margin of 52% to 48% to leave the European Union. 33% of leave voters citied the reason of being able to control immigration as the main reason they voted leave. Second only to sovereignty. I believe that this feeling can be traced right back to 2004 enlargement and Blair’s decision not impose transitional controls. Without that the scale of immigration to the UK over the last 12 years since that decision it is highly unlikely the anti-immigration feeling would be so strong in the UK. The rise in what was ultimately uncontrollable immigration from Eastern Europe is correlated with the rise of anti-EU parties and then the Brexit vote too. The only solution people saw was to leave the European Union.

I am not saying that Tony Blair is the only person to blame for the UK voting to leave, but I do think the decision he made changed people’s perspectives on the EU. There were other factors and actors of course, such as sovereignty, but no one decision went so far to stoking the anti-immigration feeling that led to Brexit.

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