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By Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew MacAskill
LONDON (Reuters) – Former British leader Tony Blair said there was a 50-50 chance of another prime minister.
Less than six months before Britain leaves the European Union, there is little clarity about how post-Brexit trade between the EU and the world's fifth largest economy will function.
If May can strike a deal with the EU
"Whatever Brexit is on offer today is going to result in significant economic harm," Blair, head of the opposition Labor Party and prime minister from 1997 to 2007, told Reuters. "I think the odds are now 50 percent that you will get another (referendum) vote."
"I still believe it's possible that Brexit is stopped," he said. "There is no majority in parliament for any proposition that the prime minister brings back."
Both opponents and supporters of Brexit agree that the divorce is Britain's most significant political and economic move since World War Two, though they cast vastly different futures for the $ 2.9 trillion UK economy and the world's biggest block trading.
Leaving the European Union has been far from faded, British leaders such as these have been controversial about when to join the euro, and talk of an exit from the fringe politicians.
But the euro zone crisis, fears in Britain about immigration and miscalculations by Prime Minister David Cameron prompted Britons to vote 52 to 48 percent for Brexit in a June 2016 referendum.
A new vote, Blair said, could ask for a vote on the issue of EU membership and offer new membership terms. He said EU leaders would be willing to reform the block.
BREXIT REVERSE GEAR?
Emmanuel Macron, who has suggested Britain could still change its mind.
Recent opinion polls indicate a slight move towards support for staying in the EU.
But May has repeatedly said there will be no new referendum.
Blair said that if Brexit did happen, economic dislocation would force Britain to deregulate further to attract foreign investors.
Brexiteers anticipate some short-term economic bread but say Britain will then thrive if cut loose from what they do as a doomed experiment in German-dominated unity and excessive debt-funded welfare spending.
Blair said that if the UK exited the EU and then socialist Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn won power, the country would face a "truly damaging and challenging situation".
"This is the problem with the policies of both major parties: they seem to think you can do it and then engage in a whole lot of social legislation to make capitalism more and more equal," Blair said.
"They've gotten to wake up to the fact that if you do, you're going to have that number-one priority to keep this place as an attractive place for investors to come."
He said European regulators would not want the center of European finance – currently London – to be outside their orbit.
"Why do we have this problem in the global economy where we are globally preeminent?" Blair said, adding that the government had cast the interests of the service sector.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew MacAskill, Editing by Gareth Jones and John Stonestreet)
