Messianic madness

AFTER a speech from a man who now seems to have absolutely no self-knowledge, and which was brimming over with Messianic madness, the Mail has only one question to ask Tony Blair. Have you totally and utterly lost the plot?

Indeed, what other explanation is there for his frankly incendiary demand for Britons to ‘rise up’ after eight months and reverse the Brexit decision?

Does he simply believe British voters are completely idiotic? Where was Mr Blair when, day after day, voters were bombarded with doomsday predictions about imminent economic collapse, soaring interest rates, collapsing house prices and an ‘immediate and profound shock’ to the economy.

What else but delusion explains Mr Blair’s demand that ministers keep open the option of staying in a ‘reformed’ EU. Has he forgotten David Cameron’s miserably failed attempt to renegotiate our relationship which achieved virtually nothing? Or that, in its response to every crisis from Italian banks to refugees and Greek debt, the EU has proved itself impervious to reform?

Blair’s speech reeked of contempt for ordinary voters. What he really means when he says Brexit ‘isn’t smart’ is that anyone who voted that way – including intellectual giants such as the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King – are utterly stupid.

But perhaps Mr Blair’s greatest delusion is that he, more than any other politician, is personally responsible for the disillusionment which drove great swathes of the public to vote for Brexit.

With the help of his venal sidekick Alastair Campbell he turned political lying into an art form and used it to take Britain into a bloody and disastrous war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

This arch-hypocrite twice promised a referendum on the EU and reneged both times. Now he has the gall to demand the wishes of 17.4million voters be reversed.

The Mail confidently believes he won’t succeed and we suggest that, as much as this newspaper criticised him for it, perhaps he should continue filling his boots by serving some of the world’s nastiest autocrats?