When my mother gatecrashed an event to meet Tony Blair before Christmas, she eagerly asked him when he was going to make his political comeback. It was a surprising intervention because she, like many Labour supporters, had felt utterly betrayed by his decision to take Britain into the Iraq War.

In recent months, however, the stability of his decade in Downing Street has come to seem like the promised land compared with the never-ending psychodrama threatening to push the UK out of the European Union with no deal. And when I repeated my mother’s question to him last week in his opulent London office, his response was just as careful. “That’s a question for another day,” he responded with his characteristic grin.

His refusal to