Nick Clegg and Chuka Umunna say Tony Blair is entitled to speak up and Brexiters are trying to muzzle debate

Leading remain campaigners have said Tony Blair must be allowed a voice in the Brexit debate, with Labour’s Chuka Umunna, the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and the Conservative MP Anna Soubry all expressing deep disquiet at what they say has been the silencing of pro-EU arguments.

The MPs were speaking at an Open Britain event, heralded as the first major cross-party event since the referendum, to push for continued membership of the single market.

Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, said he had met Blair since the referendum and said his point of view should not be delegitimised. “I’ve talked to him, I’ve talked to many people across parties about the choices we face as country,” Clegg said.

“You can disagree what someone did in the past but if their actions are saying something that is valuable and insightful now, why do you seek to silence them? It’s a free country, for heaven’s sake. I disagreed with what Blair did on Iraq but the guy is a formidable politician. What country do we live in when we say he’s not entitled to speak up?”

Last week both Blair and the former Conservative prime minister John Major suggested the public should be allowed to vote on or even veto any deal for leaving the EU.

Blair is set to launch an organisation in the new year examining how the centre left has been weakened as a political force internationally.

Umunna, the former shadow business secretary who now chairs Vote Leave Watch, which tracks the promises of leave campaigners, said Blair should be entitled speak out. “I think most of the public want to hear their point of view,” he said of Blair, Major and Clegg, though he said he would not back any move for a second referendum.

The Streatham MP said he was concerned about the tone of the debate when it came to the practicalities of leaving. “There are those who want to muzzle any debate; they don’t want to see a debate on the terms of our leaving, as if we live in some dictatorship,” he said, citing attacks on the Bank of England governor, the judiciary, and the Office of Budget Responsibility.

“If we allow this to go unchallenged we will be going down a very dangerous path indeed as a country, betraying our history and our tradition of promoting lively discussion and free speech,” he said. “Those under attack are public servants.”

Soubry, when asked about Blair, said she and others who supported continued membership of the single market would “work with anyone”. “To see the vilification of individuals is unacceptable. I will work with pretty much anyone, and I only say that because I can’t see myself working with Nigel Farage.”

A study published on Monday by the Centre for Economics and Business Research on the impact of leaving the single market found that every major wealth-creating sector would be affected negatively, particularly manufacturing and the creative industries.

Clegg said he was concerned not just about the denigration of individuals but of any idea that sought to advance discussions about the practicalities of Brexit.

He rated the chances of securing a comprehensive deal on the terms of both the UK’s exit from the EU and the future relationship with the bloc at “as low as 5%”. At the weekend Lord Kerr, Britain’s most experienced EU negotiator, said he believed the government had a less than 50% chance of securing an orderly exit from the European Union within two years and would potentially have to accept a phased departure.

“That’s why of course you need a transitional deal: it’s just a practical, technocratic fact,” Clegg said. “But the problem is now the swivel-eyed, hard Brexiteer brigade who say that is verboten as well. It’s a transition arrangement, a techie thing, that becomes some sort of ideological idea. Anything of any practical nature is now forbidden under this Brexit dogma we operate in.”



Clegg said he did not believe most voters were as dogmatic. “I spoke to many hundreds and thousands of Brexit voters on the campaign trail, decent good people who I found might have cited immigration, [but] when you spend time talking to them other things would come up quite quickly which would drive their frustrations, [such as] a lack of affordable housing,” he said.

“I personally think that a substantial mass housebuilding programme for the next decade would do more to allay some of those concerns than fiddling around with the net migration figures.”