Remember the good old days of Blair and political harmony? Me neither

‘It felt like a sigh: a great, long, uninterrupted sigh about how terrible everything is now’

Tony Blair isn’t happy. You can see it in his smile. Gone is the Cheshire Cat grin of old: the grin of triumph, and of invincible conviction. Now it’s barely a smile at all. It’s more a grimace, or a wince: pained, pleading, weary, the eyes darting about anxiously, as if hunting for the emergency exit.

Yesterday Mr Blair went to Canary Wharf in London to give a speech about the election and the state of politics. Well, I say a speech. But really it felt like a sigh: a great long uninterrupted sigh about how terrible everything is now, and how much better it used to be.

British politics, he said, had become “utterly dysfunctional”. Populism was “rampant”. Britain was in “a mess”. The next round of talks with the EU would be “horrible”. He wouldn’t “hold your breath on a US-UK trade deal”.

A few months ago he’d been to Africa to visit “one of the poorest countries in the world – and I greet the president, and the guy says to me, ‘I feel really sorry for your country’...”

In the general election, no one deserved to win a majority, not even his own party (“I tried to warn them it was a huge trap”). Both Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson were “peddling fantasies”, and a majority for either would “pose a risk” to Britain. And as for stopping Brexit: “If you have a Conservative majority the battle is lost, so you may as well just face up to that.” His gloom appeared to be infectious. “God,” whispered a woman sitting two seats along from me, “I’m so depressed.”

Even the voters themselves seemed to have let Mr Blair down. “You can’t just throw everything into the lap of the politicians, and say: ‘Here are 15 demands and I want you to meet them all, and they may be inconsistent, but tough, go and do them.’ We’ve got to up the quality of political discourse...”

Of course, it wasn’t like this in Mr Blair’s day. Back then, politics was dominated by people who were “sensible” and “reasonable”. He’d been prime minister for 10 years, you know. It was the first time Labour had won three elections in a row, or even two. Those were the days. You know, “If you had a moderate, centre-left leader of the Labour party right now, we wouldn’t be in this position…”

It was remarkable to listen to – especially coming from someone like Mr Blair. According to stereotype, it’s conservatives who bemoan the state of the modern world, Yet here, instead, it was Mr Metropolitan Liberal Elite, the Remainer-in-chief, the centrist grandad. Still, he hadn’t completely surrendered to despair. Somehow or other, said Mr Blair gamely, “We’ll sort ourselves out”.

I couldn’t quite decide who he was trying to reassure: his audience, or himself.