Tony Blair’s a flawed messenger – but he’s worth listening to on Brexit | Martin Kettle

The former prime minister still divides Labour, but he is making the best case on the left against Theresa May’s disastrous strategy

Tony Blair will be 65 this year. In the Britain he grew up in, that used to mean the male retirement age. Bring it on, many will say. But these once-immovable milestones no longer exist. They certainly do not apply to the former prime minister. For Blair has made it crystal clear in his new year intervention on Brexit that he has absolutely no intention of quitting the public stage any time soon.

This of course appals many people for serious reasons that do not need to be re-rehearsed here. Even those who continue to think well of him have their doubts. Blair is a permanently damaged figure. Whenever he enters the public arena, he always risks making himself, not what he says, into the issue – John Humphrys’ self-important aggression against Blair on the Today programme on Thursday showed this process at its most depressing. But there are three serious reasons why the rest of us should make the effort to focus on what he says, rather than on him.

Blair and accusations of Blairism have been cynically and very successfully exploited

Counties and customs

Staying in the single market and customs union

Related: Tony Blair: ‘The whole country has been pulled into this Tory psychodrama over Europe’

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