14:15

Here is the full text of the globalisation speech that Tony Blair delivered at lunchtime.

In his Q&A at the end, Blair said the Brexit vote was a response to “Europe-wide” problems and that the best option would be for the EU to come up with a new migration policy that would allow the UK to “stay in with dignity”. He said:

The sensible thing, maybe this is too rational a view, is for Europe to recognise Brexit represented a feeling that was not specific or exclusive to Britain. That is what all these elections have show in the past few months. This is a Europe-wide feeling, it is just Britain just had a referendum, so the sensible thing is for Europe to review its decisions and come to a view about reform in Europe, particularly over these issues of migration, and for Britain to be made an offer that allows us to to stay in with dignity.

Blair said the government had not even resolved what it wanted from Brexit.

What we cannot have is a situation in which Britain goes out of Europe at the end of March 2019 and does not know what it is getting. I think the government wants to do that, I am afraid, because they have no answer to the central dilemma of the negotiations as you can see from the cabinet. They do not seem to be bound by cabinet or Chatham House rules. One lot wants to keep close to Europe and that would mean regulatory alignment, so the debate becomes “what is the point?” and the other one wants to go for a clean break Brexit in which case those warnings from Airbus become very real, and the debate becomes “what is the prize?” That division has not been resolved. They have not begun negotiating with Europe.

And he restated his call for a “meaningful vote” on the final agreement.

A meaningful vote should be meaningful in the sense that we know what this new relationship entails. To go out of Europe without knowing what the future is would be a catastrophe for the country. You would be out of Europe without no bargaining power and these Brexit guys could take us in any direction, and we would have no power to retrieve the situation ... The best the Brexiteers now say about Brexit is that it is not as bad as you guys say. You go round the world and there is nobody saying “that is a really sensible thing you have done”. There is no one.