Toxic Blair still holds voters in contempt

FEARING awkward questions, Labour only invited a few hand-picked journalists to yesterday’s speech by Tony Blair, in which the man who once tried to drag Britain into the disastrous euro offered his wisdom on the benefits of the EU.

In many respects, it was like he had never been away from British politics, making millions by fawning over despots.

The same messianic self-belief that only he knows best was in evidence. So was the shuddering contempt for democracy that saw him once make an unforgivable U- turn over giving the British electorate a referendum on the sovereignty-sapping EU constitution.

The Tory plan to give the public a say on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2017? Mr Blair attacked it viciously as a recipe for economic ‘chaos’ that, if the electors weren’t ‘focused’ on the debate, might even end in our exit. What a patronising hypocrite he is. There is, however, one big difference between now and the Blair of old: a public lied to over the illegal Iraq war, mass immigration and the Lisbon Treaty no longer believes him. Thus when he told the handful of reporters present that – only four months after predicting a ‘Left-wing’ Labour Party would lose the election – he now expects Mr Miliband to win on May 7, the words rung entirely hollow.

The mystery is not that Mr Blair agreed to go on the campaign trail: now he is no longer wanted as Middle East peace envoy, his deluded sermon on the wonders of the EU will be seen by many as a bid for a well-paid job in Brussels. It’s that Labour and Red Ed – who once spoke of drawing a line under the divisive Blair years – still consider their war-mongering, money-grubbing former leader an electoral asset.