Tony Blair’s failure to control the flow of workers from eastern Europe fuelled the anti-immigration sentiment that led to the UK’s Brexit vote, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, said.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the chancellor launched a strongly worded attack on the former prime minister’s open-door policy when eight former communist countries joined the EU in 2004.
Britain was one of only three countries – alongside Sweden and Ireland – that decided to have no transitional arrangements to limit the flow of people from eastern Europe looking for work and Hammond said the results of that decision were still being felt.
