GORDON Brown has savaged David Cameron over Brexit, accusing his successor of being too “lazy” to strike a deal with Europe that could have avoided it.

In a passionate denunciation, Mr Brown said the former Tory Prime Minister and his colleagues simply “thought they would win without a fight”.

He said: “They didn’t even put the right arguments. They didn’t put a positive case for Europe and we lost the referendum, and that’s why we’re in this position, I’m afraid.”

Mr Brown, who lost the 2010 election to Mr Cameron, made the comments while arguing against a no-deal Brexit at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

He said there had been a host of substantial concessions his successor could have extracted from Brussels in early 2016, when he was negotiating a package of reforms.

Signed off in February, the deal was widely regarded as underwhelming and failed to address voter concerns over immigration, paving the way for the Leave vote four months later.

The former Labour PM said that if Mr Cameron was "honest" he would have to admit he could have done more, but failed to put in the effort.

Mr Brown said he was not condemning people who voted Leave because they wanted a change in their lives, but trying to understand what lay behind it.

READ MORE: SNP boss faces sack after independence referendum 'Plan B' blocked

He said: “If David Cameron, let’s be honest about this - he’s publishing a book in the next few weeks - if he was honest, he could have negotiated a far better deal with the European Union that would have dealt with many of their [voter] fears, that dealt with the fears about immigration, their fears about sovereignty.

“In Germany, you can’t be an immigrant unless you are registered for work. You can’t stay in Belgium after nine months if you haven’t got a job. In Switzerland, which is covered by freedom of movement, all jobs have got to be registered in unemployment areas at the labour exchange. In France, you can’t have social dumping. In other words, you can’t be paid Latvian wages if you’re a Latvian working in France. 

“He could have done all these things, and he could have dealt with some of the concerns that people had around the country about wages, and everything else.

“He could have dealt with the sovereignty question. You could have had a law passed in parliament that said any ruling of the European Court that offended the principles of the Treaty of Maastricht which required national identity to be taken into account, any ruling of the European Court would not be accepted in the British Isles if it offended these principles.

“He could have done all these things. But they were lazy. They thought they would win it without a fight. They didn’t even put the right arguments. They didn’t put a positive case for Europe and we lost the referendum, and that’s why we’re in this position, I’m afraid.”

The remarks were greeted with the loudest applause at the event. 

Mr Cameron, who quit the morning after losing the EU referendum, is to due to publish his autobiography next month.