A referendum offer you can’t refuse? Just believe honest Tony

ROLL up, roll up! Gather round, ladies and gentlemen! None other than Mr Tony Blair himself wishes to make you an offer. It’s the offer of a lifetime. Just wait till you hear it. You won’t believe your ears.

The offer, ladies and gentlemen, is this. Mr Blair promises that if you let him have just one more EU referendum – just one more – then he’ll never ask you for another one, ever again.

As long as you let Mr Blair have a second referendum, he guarantees never, ever, ever to ask you for a third. Yes, sir, you heard me correctly! No third referendum! Mr Blair is implacably opposed to a third referendum!

Because this time, even if his side loses, Mr Blair promises to accept the result, and move on. No more speeches about how Brexit’s got to be stopped. No more interviews on the Today programme about what a disaster it’s going to be.

You have Mr Blair’s solemn word. Cross his heart, and hope to die. Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it, ladies and gentlemen?

And yet all you have to do, to take advantage of this incredible offer, is give Mr Blair just one more little referendum. That’s all he asks.

Come on, madam. Come on, sir. Can’t say fairer than that. Absolute bargain. He’s robbing himself here.

Well? What do you say? Yes, madam. What’s that? You want to know the exact wording of Mr Blair’s unbelievable offer? Certainly, madam.

It so happens that Mr Blair was doing a Q&A yesterday at the Thomson Reuters building in Canary Wharf, no less, when he said, and I quote: “This referendum would be definitive, and I think everyone would have to agree it was definitive.”

Those were Mr Blair’s words, madam! And he didn’t end there! He also said, “If the British people still vote for Brexit, my attitude is: ‘OK, that’s it, guys – we’ve all got to get behind it and try and make it work.’”

You see, madam! A cast-iron guarantee! What’s that, sir? You want to know how precisely Mr Blair thinks a second referendum would come about? Why, that’s simple, sir. Mr Blair explained it clearly.

All it would take, he said, is for Labour MPS to vote down whatever deal Theresa May strikes with the EU, then call for a vote of no confidence in her, then hope she wins it, then persuade her to allow a Commons vote on whether to hold a second referendum, and then persuade Tory MPS to vote to hold that second referendum.

Simple as that, sir! Thank goodness we’ve got plenty of time left before March 29 not only for all of that to happen, but to conduct a 10-week referendum campaign!

So you see, ladies and gentlemen. When Mr Blair puts it like that, how can you possibly refuse?