SUFFER the little children to come unto…Tony Blair. Okay, the pupils he addressed at Sedgefield Community College were not perhaps the wide-eyed innocents welcomed by Jesus. Still, an audience of schoolchildren, non-voters, seemed a strange one for Mr Blair to choose to make his North-East pitch for a second Brexit referendum. Perhaps he feared a more difficult reception on a factory floor.

He appeared to argue two ways. First he diminished Brexit by claiming it didn’t address the “challenges” in the North-East, from which it would be a “distraction.” But then, rightly, he dubbed Brexit “the biggest issue of the day.” And he spoke truth when he accused Labour of being ambiguous on the matter. But Mr Blair is a leader of forces that have been determined to overturn Brexit since the public delivered its explosive rejection of the EU in June 2016. Their efforts to wear down the public also recently brought to the North-East former political adversaries David Miliband and John Major, each buttressing the others anti-Brexit views in a public forum.

But let us stick with Mr Blair. For or against Brexit, all will agree the process is now a complete mess. In all our history it is harder to think of a greater debacle – certainly none more humiliating. And it is even harder not to believe that Britain’s position today would be very different had the anti-Brexit agitators accepted the result as promised by the Government, whose (pro-Brexit) booklet, delivered to every home, announced: “We will implement what you decide.”

Of course our political elite didn’t foresee a need to fulfil that promise, which it hasn’t. But now, in calling for a second referendum, Tony Blair insists the result would be “decisive”. He says: “If the British still vote for Brexit my attitude is: Ok, that’s it guys – we’ve all got to get behind it and make it work.” Shame he didn’t take that view originally, not least since the Brexit vote, 17.4 million, was the largest ever recorded for anything. It delivered a majority of 1.2m, plus another 70,000 or so, whereas for the “decisive” People’s Vote Mr Blair proposes accepting a majority of just one.

Mr Blair plays to the mantra that “we all know more about this than we did two years ago.” He overlooks that the first referendum sprang from rising unrest with the EU through four decades. But the referendum was still granted only on the expectation we would vote to stay in.

While my guess is that a new vote would be to remain, it’s amazing that the negotiating behaviour of the EU alone hasn’t boosted support for leaving. For instance, Britain has been prepared to import all the EU’s technical requirements for trade and transport, including air travel. But the EU refuses to recognise them, threatening hold-ups and gridlock. The chaos to member states matters less than its goal of a federal Europe, to which punishing Britain for wishing to leave is vital. Second referendum or not, signs are we will not effectively leave the EU. That will be the biggest betrayal of democracy since Magna Carta set us on the long, painful road to achieving it. While bloodless, it will nevertheless be the modern equivalent of the ruthless crushing of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1310.