Cat Boyd: Thin-skinned, vain, and dangerous ... Tony Blair is the yin to Donald Trump’s yang

The Guardian published a set of responses to his Brexit speech, and three out of five commentators proclaimed that yes, Blair could be the man to bring Britain back from the brink.

Personally, I found his speech haunting. Partly, that’s because Blair increasingly looks and sounds like a YouTube mash-up of the 10 most terrifying speeches of Hollywood’s most hubristic villains. There’s a bit of Orson Welles as Harry Lime on the Ferris wheel in the Third Man: “Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me, would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”

There’s a drizzle of Peter Finch losing the plot in Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!” A dash of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now: “the horror!” And, finally, since we’re talking oil, a splash of Daniel Day Lewis berating Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood: “I drink your milkshake!”

Blair represents the soul sickness that comes with an outsized ego and a lack of personal responsibility for the damage you’ve caused to society. There’s something about plotting a war of aggression and then failing at it – badly – that gives you that unique mix of diabolical cunning and wounded pride. So rather than retreat from his disasters, or be humbled by them, Blair continues to roll the dice, hoping to double up with a gamble more massive than the War on Terror.

Like so many Bond villains, Blair is a hated outlaw and a reclusive figure who nonetheless possesses money, privilege and global influence. That’s why liberals are turning to him. Faced with the extraordinary egos of Boris Johnson and company, they feel they need an equally outsized megalomaniac to turn the tables on them.

But this shows why liberals keep losing the argument. They lost the referendum because the European project became associated with a jet-setting corporate elite where businessmen and politicians are interchangeable and accountability is zero. The European Union stood for “post-democracy”, the surrender of political responsibility to global economic forces. And nobody epitomised that pact like Tony Blair.

Faced with nationalists of the likes of Johnson, May and Trump, some people see Blair as an internationalist. But he isn’t. Blair, instead, is a cosmopolitan, somebody who feels equally happy and at home among the elites of any country. Blair is comfortable in a business lounge in Johannesburg, an executive suite in Washington, a private yacht in Geneva or the debating chamber in Brussels.

The global establishment welcomes Blair as one of their own. However, Blair can’t step out of that bubble, or he’ll be chased by protesters of many nationalities who can’t quite shake off the war crimes he committed in Iraq. That’s what separates a shallow cosmopolitan from an internationalist.

Our political culture is suffering because we can’t separate the two. This means that the moral case for refugees has been confused with the post-democratic machinations of political leeches such as the Blairs and the Clintons. That’s why, right now, left or liberal, we’re losing.

Blair’s main concession to Brexit, interestingly, is a polite form of extreme racism. Since Blair isn’t Trump, he minces his words enough to allow for ambiguous interpretations. But look closely, and the meaning is clear.

Take this passage. “The core immigration question – and one which I fully accept is a substantial issue – is immigration from non-European countries, especially when from different cultures in which assimilation and potential security threats can be an issue.”

Translation: people are largely concerned about non-white immigration, and, particularly, Muslims. We can work with them on this; we liberals are worried about Muslims too. Blair’s bargain, then, is to allow the tabloids and the grunts to go on dehumanising “Islamic” immigration. In return, they should remove the stain of darkness from white, Christian Europeans so that we can regain the economic benefits of the European single market.

Crucially, it’s the mirror image of Corbyn’s much-maligned Brexit pact. Corbyn aims to give the masses what they voted for – Brexit – and, in return, he wants space to argue against Islamophobia and racism.

Blair’s offer shows elite Remainers aren’t really opposed to racism at all. But should we be surprised? Of course not. Under New Labour governments, official Islamophobia reached deafening levels. Stop and Search became a fact of life for Muslim communities. Racial profiling at borders and in the streets was routinised. And that’s before we consider the staggering racism of two white countries bypassing the United Nations to impose their design on the destiny of the Arab world.

Compared to Trump, the difference, of course, is rhetorical politeness. Blair reads the Koran. He treats Arab leaders respectfully when he’s not invading their countries. He knows more than four adjectives.

But Blair is the yin to Trump’s yang. Blair represents the executive elite, the Davos consensus, the liberal imperialist wing of the yacht-owning set. Trump is the billionaire voice of down-to-earth folksy racists who’d like to send them all back.

Yet the two are eerily similar. They are both thin-skinned, vain, dangerous men and they both resemble a genetic hybrid of every bad guy from a superhero movie ever.

Indeed, from a leftist perspective, Trump has at least one distinct advantage over Blair. When Potus commits a monstrous act of racial prejudice, the liberal elite tend to notice it. By contrast, Guardian journalists earnestly debated whether Blair’s multiple acts of extraordinary, violent racism should rightfully be called “humanitarian intervention”.

Cosmopolitans like Blair don’t go out of their way to be racist. However, they tend to be contemptuous of the wishes and the aspirations of poor people, which they simply manage through public relations and marketing. However, most of the world’s poorest people are non-white, and, as such, they tend to be the first victims of schemes made by cosseted leaders in isolated resorts. They’re always expendable when political expediency demands it.

Liberals can turn to Blair if they’re that desperate. But, in doing so, they’ve surrendered their right to claim moral superiority over anyone. Nobody embodies the recklessness of unchecked Western power like the former Labour leader. If you make common cause with this man, you’ve forfeited your right to speak for the global oppressed, forever.

Trump banned refugees fleeing persecution: that’s racist and abhorrent. Blair’s schemes created millions of refugees that didn’t exist before: that’s worse.

For anyone who’s concerned about the future of Western democracy, there should be one question about Tony Blair, and one question alone: should we allow him to live out his days in a prison cell, or should we prosecute him for war crimes?