Theresa May slaps down Tony Blair’s call for Remoaners to mobilise against Brexit and insists ‘Britain is leaving Europe’

THERESA May has knocked back Tony's Blair's suggestion that there could be a second referendum - and insists "Britain is leaving Europe".

Former Prime Minister Mr Blair said Britain should keep its "options open" over Brexit - which may mean a fresh vote.

In an interview with the Beeb he said it was a chance to reverse the Brexit "catastrophe".

And he told Remain voters "we're the insurgents now", urging them to persuade Leave supporters that the country was better off in the EU.

But Mrs May's spokesman said: "The PM has been absolutely clear - the British people have spoken, we are listening, we're going to leave the European Union.

"And not only has the PM been clear here but she's also been clear when she's met European leaders.

"There will be no second referendum."

Mr Blair said the will of the people should be respected but insisted Remain voters "have to believe in the people's innate sense, that they're also open to a better argument in the light of the facts as they come to light".

Issuing his rallying cry, he said Remain voters should "mobilise and organise" to "prise apart the alliance which gave us Brexit" and insisted that, as the "catastrophic" realities of leaving take hold, staying in must remain an option.

He highlighted the sharp fall in the pound as a "negative prediction about our economic future", and the blocking of a Canada-EU free trade deal by the Walloon regional parliament in Belgium as evidence that Brexit may not take the form many Leave voters had imagined.

Brexit-backing politicians are now openly acknowledging that leaving means freeing Britain from its "essential social democratic" model, including a free NHS, he said.

In its place they envisage "free market, free trading, light regulation, low tax, low social protection" like in city states Hong Kong and Singapore - something which not all Leave voters would back.

Writing in the New European newspaper, Mr Blair said: "The issue is not whether we ignore the will of the people, but whether, as information becomes available, and facts take the place of claims, the 'will' of the people shifts.

"Maybe it won't, in which case people like me will have to accept it.

"But surely we are entitled to try to persuade, to make the argument, and not to be whipped into line to support a decision we genuinely believe is a catastrophe for the country we love."

He said Remain voters must win the argument that staying in the EU should stay on the table, warning that anger and anxiety about immigration, globalisation, stagnant incomes, housing and squeezed public services will only get worse outside the EU.

"Right now there is one point and one point only to win: we should keep every option open," Mr Blair wrote.

"That this should even be contentious speaks loudly about how much those of us - and after all we were 16 million people - who believe Britain's future lies within the European partnership, have been shoved on to the defensive."