“Yeah, I mean, it’s great,” he said.

And for Blair, all deference disappeared when the British had their suspicions confirmed that the selling of the Iraq invasion was based on sexed-up evidence, and that their prime minister’s role as W.’s enabler and simultaneous translator had helped pave the path to endless war and ISIS.

Blair has plunged back into the fray as a leading advocate for overturning Brexit. His office — along with David Geffen’s yacht, to which Blair is no stranger — is ground zero for the global elite. Although he bristled at that term. “On this elite thing, the progressives are just going to stand up for themselves and push back against” that hooey, he said, using a stronger word. “The idea that the handful of right-wing media proprietors here are some ordinary Joes from the street, I mean, it’s ridiculous. There are elites on both sides.”

While we’re on the subject of right-wing media proprietors, I broached the subject of his former benefactor and buddy Rupert Murdoch, who cut him off when he came to believe that Blair had been involved with his then-wife, Wendi. (Blair denies it.) Will they ever be friends again?

“I don’t think I’ll comment on that one,” Blair said with a tight smile.

I asked if his quixotic push against Brexit was an expiation for his push for the Iraq war — even though he maintains that, as he looks at Syria, he still feels it was right to go into Iraq.

“No is the answer to that,” he replied.

I’ve always thought Blair was one of a handful of people who could have stopped the Iraq war, and I was fierce in my criticisms of him.

In London, though, I stopped short of doing what some here, including a bartender at a hip London restaurant where Blair was dining, have done: a citizen’s arrest for crimes against peace. (A website called arrestblair.org — with a current pot of over 10,000 pounds — offers a reward for Blair’s capture, or attempted capture.)

Even though he stiffened, I asked why he helped W. switch 9/11 villains from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.