Dear Boris, it seems you aren't well disposed to Westminster democracy

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder
— I haven’t had a drink for hours —
And all that time I began to ponder
If forbearance actually empowers

The absentee to break a strong habit
Which applies to love and booze
As the bewildered Alice said to the Rabbit
‘What price do I pay if I lose?’”
From Insult to Anjali by Bachchoo

AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Boris,

I apologise for the belated congratulations on achieving your lifetime aim of becoming the Prime Minister of Great Britain. I am writing this from Mumbai (a city in India) on the day that the British Parliament has defeated your plans. Of course they aren’t — they are the plans of your adviser, the Weirdo… (But: Never say die, old bean, what, what?)

I thought for a moment I could blame the Indian post for this late congratulation. You entered 10 Downing Street weeks ago after your democratic triumph through the votes of about 60 per cent of the 160,000 voting members of the Conservative Party, leaving the 67 million population of the UK wondering what the word “democracy”, which Weirdo tells you to bang on about, actually means.

I remember you were a strong supporter of Parliament and see it as the primary instrument of the democratic structure that Britain invented. And now you have asked the Queen to silence it.

So it seems you don’t feel well disposed to the Westminster democracy which seems to overrule the intentions of that small sample of bigots who put you in Downing Street. Parliament’s actions this week, according to your Weirdo and your chamchas and chamchis, go against the democratic vote of 51 per cent of the population who voted to leave the European Union. Your opponents in Parliament point out that you told these voters a load of scary lies at the time and Weirdo ran a campaign with the cunning of Joseph Goebbels, feeding shibboleths to racist sheep.

The loss of two significant parliamentary votes makes your position precarious. I promise to write a letter of condolence if you and your mistress have to vacate 10 Downing Street and go down in history as a sort of Nero who would watch Britain burn!

Your own senior colleagues, including Ken Clarke, veteran Tory minister in former governments, Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, whose patriotism cannot be challenged, and 19 others who voted with the Opposition. They succeeded, or are on the way to succeeding, in preventing you from taking Britain out of the European Union without any deal and all the concessions and trade deals you have with the 27 other countries in the EU. The benefit you say is that Great Britain will then be free of the regulations that the EU has passed, but when asked which laws you would like to get rid of, you mutter some nonsense about eggs or sandwiches — I can’t remember which.

Then the second vote you called for and lost was for a general election. That too was resoundingly defeated. Weirdo, who was by eye-witness accounts drunk at the time, shouted at Labour MPs in the corridors of Westminster asking them why they were afraid of a general election. He was led away by bodyguards or perhaps by security guards.

You constantly tell the public that Great Britain will be made great again outside the EU. The irony of that deceit is that there will not be a Great Britain to be made great again, as Scotland and perhaps even Northern Ireland will become separate countries and you’ll be left with little England and a very shifty Wales.

Your strategy, which certainly emanates from Weirdo, is to call a general election and promise the sort of people who would vote for you that you will expand the prison system, increase the police force and promise more money for schools, technical education and the National Health Service — this last because even hardcore right-wingwallas have flesh that is heir to ills.

What you don’t and won’t tell these voters is that if you get your way you will suck up to “trade deals” with Donald Trump’s United States, which will subject little England’s NHS to pressure from the exploitative “free market” medical industry of America so that even those who vote for you and the rest of us will end up paying to see doctors and be treated in hospitals.

I am sure you are aware of all this and sincerely sympathise if it gives you sleepless nights and threatens to split your genial personality into a clownish Jekyll and an ambitious Hyde.

You will recall that we met when you were editor of the Spectator and I introduced you at breakfast at Peter Oborne’s house in Highbury to the serial killer Charles Sobhraj who was at the meeting trying to sell you a story of international significance in which you professed an immediate interest. And then again, we met several times when you were MP for Henley and on one of these occasions we sat on a bench in the town square waiting for the Oxfam charity shop to open as you insisted that they had the best second-hand books on sale for peanuts. You found a copy of one of my short story collections for 30 pence and bought it. Happier times.

A last piece of advice, dear Boris: persuade Weirdo to tell your chamcha, Sajid Javid, to add some budgeting to assist the homeless and to instruct your chamchi, Priti Patel, to not set the bloodhounds and police on people who are homeless and are compelled to sleep on the streets. She, a former supporter of capital punishment, is the sort who would want to round them up and lock them up in the expanded prisons.

But Boris, “think”! What would happen to you and your mistress when you are kicked out of Downing Street and hit the pavements of London?

Your friendly Remainer, fd