It might have been the slap, but the eyes seemed more sparkly and the face less cadaverous than the last time Tony Blair appeared in public, after the publication of the Chilcot report. This was more the Tony we used to know and love. Or hate. When the former Labour prime minister is in full-on messianic mode, he doesn’t particularly mind which. He is happy to let history be his judge. And on Brexit, he may be judged rather more kindly than he was over Iraq.
Tony looked out at his invited audience at Bloomberg. There was Cherie. And there was Anji Hunter. At least he had two people he could count on. “Rise up,” he cried. “People of Britain, rise up.” No one appeared to budge from their seats. Undaunted, he tried again. “Rise up. The road we are going down is not simply hard Bregsit. It is Bregsit at any cost.” Still nothing. His faith in the willingness of governments to listen when people rise up was touching, if perhaps misplaced. Two million people demonstrating against the Iraq war had changed nothing.
But that was then and this was now. Let bygones be bygones. When Britannia called, Tony was not to be found wanting. He may not succeed, but he couldn’t sit idly by while Theresa May drove the country needlessly off a cliff. Yes, people had voted for Bregsit last June, but that was then and this was now. People had voted without knowledge of the true terms of Bregsit and, as these terms became clear, it was their right to change their mind. His mission was to persuade them to do so. Tony likes a nice mission.
“I make no personal criticism of the prime minister,” Tony continued, before going on to do just that. Before the referendum she had campaigned – briefly, admittedly – in favour of remaining in the EU. Now, Theresa was calling Brexit a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She was just a political opportunist, a passenger in a bus being driven by crazed ideologues who were hellbent on getting Britain out of the EU regardless of the consequences.
The country had been lied to about the £350m and it had been lied to about immigration. Leaving the EU was going to do next to nothing to reverse the tide of globalisation, Scotland would become independent and Brexit was going to be so all-consuming over the next few years that the government would not have the time to fix the NHS or the education system. “Government for Bregsit is a mono-purpose entity,” Tony said. “Bregsit is what government thinks about when it wakes up, its meditation before bed, and its stuff of dreams and nightmares.”
It might have all been too little too late – it might have helped the remain cause if someone had bothered to speak so passionately and positively about the benefits of the EU before the referendum – but Tony was not to be denied. First he took a swipe at the rightwing media for giving the prime minister an easy ride just so long as she pursued all things Brexit. Then he laid into his own side. “The debilitation of Labour is the facilitator of Bregsit,” he observed.
Tony paused for a moment, as if allowing himself to revisit the pain he still felt at being vilified for winning three elections. Then he pulled himself together. He was right. He always had been and always would be. That’s all that counted in the end. As his self-belief returned, the years rolled back to when he mattered and his speech began to adopt familiar mannerisms. “When peopul see that we’re gettin all this pain for so li-ul gain, they are gonna wonda if it wuz wurf it,” he said. “You know wha? Peopul are gonna say I’m na likin vis.” Tony the man of the people was back. Right then, right now, he didn’t care what people thought about him. Sure, he knew he had form and that people would come gunning for him, but if he didn’t say something, who would? Top of the world, Ma.
“Rise up,” he concluded. Still no one did. But there was a smattering of applause. More than he was used to, at any rate.
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