DEAR Theresa, or should that be Therese …

What I am about to impart to you pains me far more than it does you. As Tacitus once put it, “Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris”. I realise you don’t have the advantage of a classical education and so I shall offer a rough translation: “It’s only human to hate those whom you have injured.” However, I don’t hate you, Theresa; I merely pity you.

Despite our differences over Brexit, Fishing, Agriculture, Business, Politics, Democracy and the future of the Tory Party, not to mention piffling concerns such as swearing, Johnny Foreigner and the correct way of addressing the fuzzy-wuzzies, I feel we had much in common. I know that you will encounter a few dark nights of the soul as you begin to contemplate running the country without me. But as the Roman Emperor Iniquitous once said: “Et dormiam cum moriar”, a phrase I believe has since been popularised by the modern lyricist Jon Bon Jovi.

When my old Bullingdon chums decided that you could be trusted to hold the jackets for us two years ago when we made you leader I must admit I had some reservations.

Not only did you buy your own furniture but your husband, dare I say it, reminded some of us of Arthur Askey in the old spectacle department. But you had a way with you that brought back happy memories of cook doling out the rhubarb and custard in the refectory at Eton.

I know we have had our differences but your selflessness and sense of purpose in serving your country has been unimpeachable and so too has your loyalty to me personally … for the most part. I know the future may hold a degree of uncertainty and that you may experience feelings of trepidation.

This is normal though when one who has touched the hem of power and greatness finds herself suddenly out in the cold. See it though as an opportunity. The Roman consul Ubiquitous, cousin of Iniquitous, once wrote: “Gloria’s Been Sick in Transit” but by all accounts she went on to make a full recovery.

In the years when you served under me in Cabinet I feel I got to know your real strengths. Certainly, you could be a bit uppity at Cabinet meetings and that you often travelled under the misapprehension that you were actually running the show, ha ha. This is a normal human reaction.

When one finds oneself in the same room as raw power one can be forgiven for believing that one possesses some too, so does one. In any event, I trust that the investment advice that Farage and I offered your hubby a propos those health contracts will ensure that neither of you need to worry about keeping some roofs over your heads.

I realised during our little pow-wow at Chequers last weekend that you had begun to lose the plot and that you were suffering from leadership delusions. To be honest with you, I actually blame myself for this. I should have taken David’s advice last year when he wanted to have a chaperone with you whenever you stepped out of Downing Street.

I genuinely thought that the briefing paper I handed you before our meeting at Chequers offered a realistic and achievable way forward in pursuing our Brexit dream.

Yet you hardly gave it a second glance. Yes, okay; I acknowledge that the heading I chose for my paper “Why The Onion Johnnies Don’t Like it up ’Em” might have been a bit off-putting but I feel that it accurately captured the attitudes of our sneaky adversaries on the other side of the Channel.

It’s not that I am set against all movement of people from the European Union, Theresa; it’s just that I wanted to let the right sort in to help make Britain great again. In view of this my plan to restrict entry to foreigners with at least £50k in the bank and furthermore to compel them to pledge an oath of loyalty to the Conservative Party and to be able to recite Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by heart was a reasonable one.

I also felt that the use of gunboats to protect our fishing grounds was an entirely reasonable one. My illustrious predecessor Lord Palmerston used this to great effect in the Don Pacifico Incident and from thenceforth those cheeky Greek gangsters have always known their place. Furthermore my proposal to deport all of those holding an Irish passport and banning the wearing of green on St Patrick’s Day would have quickly brought Dublin into line over the Irish border issue.

We’ve been giving it jaw-jaw for two years Theresa and it’s now time for a bit of war-war. I need hardly remind you of how much a decent overseas entanglement does wonders for our armaments industry which, the last time I looked, was responsible for funding most of the bloody party.

And I feel that your loose talk about a Brexit dividend for the NHS after we stop paying the Europeans their protection money was a little unwise. The next thing you know is that the bloody northerners will actually expect us to build all those new hospitals for them. Most of them are killing themselves and dying of cancer and heart disease by smoking, drinking pale ale and shopping at Iceland. Until this sort of behaviour stops we can’t continue to keep them in nurses and medication.

I thought we’d all agreed that this was why we introduced Universal Credit: to get their weight down and leave them with no option but to stop drinking and smoking and to encourage them to visit food banks where they might actually start encountering vegetables for the first time in their miserable sodding lives. But oh no; you knew better.

The whole point about Brexit was to grab back the power to make and pass our own laws. It is enshrined in the maxim of the great Roman law-giver, Judicious Dreddus; “ET EGO LEGIS”. This means that we can do away with all remaining trade union legislation and restrictive employment practices like sick pay, maternity leave, paid holidays and the minimum wage. These are the things that have held British manufacturing back. And what was not to like about enforcing a “Buy British” law by imposing on-the-spot fines? By rolling this out across the UK we wouldn’t need to trade with the bloody EU anyway.

It remains for me to thank you for your dedication in my Cabinet. Be sure to leave your contact details with Jacob’s butler in the event that we might need you again.

Boris.