Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent call for voters to think again about leaving the European Union, echoed in parliamentary debates ahead of the government’s official launch of the process in March, is an Emperor’s New Clothes moment.

Although Blair is now an unpopular figure, his voice, like that of the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, is loud enough to carry above the cabal of flatterers assuring Prime Minister Theresa May that her naked gamble with Britain’s future is clad in democratic finery.