My Dear Theresa,

Thank you for your letter, which, I think, will not go down to posterity. No, I will not apologize. I understand that you and your cronies need to black me out before the upcoming leadership election, but I will not so easily be silenced. Indeed, I will give the common people what they want – a bit of spice in their lives.

For under your leadership Britain has become a bit dreary. The Brexit campaign was fun – buses and slogans – but you have made it into the most interminably long bore in human history, and it will do for you. The ordinary people do not want to discuss regulations, but fish and chips. They need to have a pee whenever they want, not dictated from Brussels. They do not want to be strong and stable, but have a drink and a good stagger home.

You do not understand the basis of Conservatism. It is to get the common people to discuss trivia. The Coliseum ran Rome. The hoi polloi worried about whether some poor christian bugger was eaten by a lion and not about running the empire. Even that short trousered bastard Gove sees the point. He can get people worried about wood burning stoves when the planet is going down the tubes. Conservatism is about making trivia important and not saying, but presuming, “Trust us”. We must look right and the Whitehall wallahs will do the work.

That is why I brought up letterboxes. The masses like letterboxes. Everybody is an equal authority on letterboxes and we can all talk about whether some burka manufacturers are offended. Everyone’s posting letters. And we need to see our women, properly or improperly, as the case may be.

Of course, clothes are important and how you wear them. Merely wearing trousers does not replace thousands of years of male culture – Omdurman, Polo and a wallet in the back pocket. With a hitch of my trousers I can say to the common people I do not give a toss for diets, perms, female make-up, fashion and cummerbunds, and I am one of them. Of course, I am not, as Caesar and Churchill were not, because I have set out on the course of leadership, but the people can see I am one of them because I have not combed my hair as I get into the limousine.

The masses need Once more unto the beach, dear friends, once more, as my friend Churchill said, especially this summer. We will meet you on the beaches and you WILL speak our language, not some foreign lingo.

Being Foreign Secretary was hell. They were all talking in some God-forsaken language and I needed Perkins of the FO to tell me what they were saying and where they lived, so it is great to be out and after the top job. After all, with Dave and George gone I am the only member of the Bullingdon Club fit to rule. So, in a little while, Theresa, you will be pitching weak and unstable on a Brexit roundabout and the Money will know that only I can hold off Clem Attlee and the dreaded redistribution. Without the Money you are dead. Definitely not May the best horse win.

Boris.