LABOUR were left in chaos yesterday after Tony Blair criticised Jeremy Corbyn’s “timid” position on Brexit and accused the veteran left winger of being on the same side as the Tories.

In a series of interviews, Blair repeatedly called for another vote before Britain leaves the EU, and warned his former colleagues to take a stand.

A shadow cabinet minister described Blair’s intervention as “less than helpful”.

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There was surprising support from other quarters: “Imagine, Blair having to lecture Corbyn about siding with the Tories on an issue that will impoverish British workers and erode their rights,” the SNP’s Pete Wishart tweeted.

Blair defended his speaking out. During a television interview he said: “I know there will be a lot of people criticising me for intervening on this at all, but my attitude is: it’s a free country, I’ve got a right to speak.”

Asked if his comments would be helpful to Corbyn, Blair replied: “I don’t know whether it’s helpful or not. He and I have a profound disagreement about this.”

He added: “What he thinks is best to do is carry through Brexit and what I’m trying to say to people like him and others in the Labour Party is if you carry on with this Brexit business, you’ll be in the same position as the Tory Party.”

During another television interview later yesterday he said that if Corbyn was willing to change on Brexit “the Labour Party would annihilate the Tories”.

Blair explained: “Because it would go right back into the fundamental division within the Tory Party over the future of the country. It would be a much more powerful political position.”

He added: “I understand the politics of this which is to say a substantial number of Labour voters voted leave so we’ve just got to go ahead,

“But it’s far better to go on to the high ground and give some leadership to our people: make their Brexit a Tory Brexit and deal with people’s anxieties – whether immigration or jobs or inequality or living standards – by policies which address those questions.”

The former Labour leader was accused of attempting to “sabotage the result of the referendum”.

Blair told a radio interviewer that there should be a special general election once voters had seen the “terms of the alternative relationship” negotiated between the UK and the EU.

Former Tory chancellor Norman Lamont said Blair’s intervention “was straight out of the EU school of referendums: only vote when you know what the result is going to be.

“If it’s a no, have another one, if it’s a yes, carry on.”

He added that Blair’s argument would undermine Theresa May in Brexit negotiations: “How are the Government meant to get a good deal if we’re going to have voices like Tony Blair’s at home saying ‘Whatever deal is achieved must be subject to another referendum’? That would be an incentive to the EU to give us the worst possible deal. That is very much against the national interest.”

And, in an argument that will not go unnoticed by the SNP leadership, Blair also said that calling for a second vote was not undemocratic. He said he “accepted entirely” the result of the referendum but insisted “democracy doesn’t just stop on one day”.

He said: “I’m simply saying one very, very simple thing, which is that in 2016 you knew you wanted to get out of the European Union but you didn’t see the terms of the alternative relationship.

“If when you see those terms you think it is better to stick with Europe you are entitled to have that say.”

The interviews came after an article by Blair published yesterday wrote an article today in The Huffington Post accusing Labour of strategic and tactical error, telling the party to criticise the Tories for making sure all the “energies of government and substantial amounts of cash are devoted to Brexit.”