'50-50 chance of second Brexit referendum': Ex British PM Tony Blair
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With just over nine weeks until Britain is due to leave the EU, there is still no deal on the divorce terms and future relations, after parliament last week crushingly defeated the plan that Prime Minister Theresa May had negotiated.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair said on Thursday that he believed the chances of a second Brexit referendum taking place were now greater than 50 percent.
With just over nine weeks until Britain is due to leave the EU, there is still no deal on the divorce terms and future relations, after parliament last week crushingly defeated the plan that Prime Minister Theresa May had negotiated.
"The real options have dawned on the members of parliament and therefore, there's not really a majority at the moment for any Brexit proposition," Blair, who opposes leaving the European Union, told Reuters TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Since rejecting May's deal, British lawmakers have failed to unite behind any other option and remain deeply divided over how to proceed. Some favour a second referendum as a way of breaking the deadlock in parliament.
Blair, from the main opposition Labour Party and prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said Britain was faced with the choice of a "pointless" Brexit that would render the country a "rule-taker", or a painful break away from the EU.