John Major spoke of 'healing Brexit divisions' but only offered solutions that would divide yet further

Sir John's solutions of a free parliamentary vote on Brexit or a second referendum would be orders of magnitude more divisive than anything that has come before

Sir John Major called for a free vote in parliament on the Brexit deal (PA)

If pro-EU campaigners are looking for a kindly old man with grey hair and white skin around whom to construct a personality cult then, on Wednesday afternoon, their candidate arrived: Sir John Major. I would even suggest a nickname - The Absolute Bastard - though you would need to be familiar with internecine euro-Tory warfare of a quarter of a century ago to get it, which rules out virtually everyone under 35, and above that, virtually everyone normal.

“The bastards” was how Sir John accidentally allowed himself to be recorded, in 1993, referring to three turbulent Eurosceptics in his cabinet. This endearing term has since come to be attached to a now well known cadre of Conservative MPs who find absolutely nothing untoward in combining their principal employment - that of Tory MP - with their principal passion - that of breaking every Tory Prime Minister they serve, one after the other after the other.

But times change, and so do bastards. Your John Redwoods, your Bill Cashes, your Bernard Jenkinses - they have the nation dancing to their witless tune now, and so it falls to Sir John Major to steam in and undermine a Prime Minister from his own party with calculated impact.

It is long decades since Spitting Image depicted Major as being entirely grey, from his tie to his hair, to his skin to his fingertips. And yet, presumably unrelatedly, he now operates as a political version of what Andy McNab in Bravo Two Zero describes as “the grey man.” He lurks unseen and unnoticed in the background, irrelevant and inconsequential, until WALLOP! He makes his devastating presence felt.

Sir John spoke in a long, windowless tunnel of a room that once held barges on their way up the Thames and could, in the future, serve as a nuclear air raid shelter for post-apocalyptic hipsters.

The audience were from “the creative industries”, and very Remainy indeed.

They heard how, by 2021, “the electorate will have changed”, and “people will have changed their mind.” But such things work both ways, and the idea of anyone in this room changing their mind on the EU seemed slim indeed.

In words only loosely rewritten from the book of Isaiah, he urged Theresa May and Britain’s Brexit negotiators to rise up and beat their “red lines” into “concessions”. That way, “possibilities enlarge” - which they do, to include the option Sir John wants, which is to remain in the European Union.

He spoke of the need to “heal divisions” wrought by Brexit, of the urgent need to find “answers, not aspirations.”

But he offered answers that would surely divide further, not heal.

He compelled Theresa May to offer “a free vote” to parliament on the terms of any final deal, which would invite it only to overturn the result of the largest vote and most divisive political event in living memory.

If they could not do that, the decision, he said, “could be returned to the people.” But if there is anyone out there - leave, remain, or indeed neutral, if such a thing exists - who doesn’t think a second referendum would be a whole order of magnitude more poisonous and more divisive than the last, then they are, surely mad.

His voice almost cracked at the end. Hairs rose on the backs of necks. The dark claustrophobia of the setting helped. Those who had been digital marketers or post production editors by morning, felt suddenly as if they might be counter-revolutionaries. But the thrill of panic in the chest owes much to the late hour Sir John correctly described. The hero may have arrived, but the battle is long since lost.