Little Britain is back and Prime Minister will soon learn it’s no laughing matter

Now that the UK has left the EU, it is appropriate that Matt Lucas and David Walliams are resurrecting their BBC sketch show Little Britain. I would hope they will include a dishevelled, hapless, self-centred character who seems eternally optimistic despite the world crumbling around him.

Now seems an appropriate time, therefore, to consider the state of the country at a crossroads in its history. Firstly, Boris Johnson may want to look north. There he will see a country which did not vote to leave the EU and decisively voted against his brand of inward-looking, narrow-minded conservatism. Independence is on the agenda but unlikely to be successful as too many Scots will vote against it through fear of the unknown, rather than a deeply entrenched dislike of an independent Scotland or a love of Boris Johnson. However, Scotland will always be a thorn in his side.

If he looks west he will see a quixotic president who only has interest in the US, and will be re-elected because of this. Despite his chumminess, Donald Trump doesn’t care about the UK as they’ve left the EU and that’s all that concerned him. But Brexit will prove financially lucrative to him.

Looking east, Johnson will see an EU who will be in no mood to help out the UK – and who can blame them? Parts of the UK were too insular to buy into the European project anyway.

Closer to home, Johnson will watch as the Royal Family disintegrates, removing a favoured institution of his party which it always used to drum up the idea of a united Englishness.

So once he has stopped waving the Union flag and lighting beacons to celebrate us becoming a small country again, he has quite a job on his hands. The best of British luck to him.

D MITCHELL Coates Place, Edinburgh

Having lived through our Continental farrago I think the cardinal error was a failure to recognise the extent of our post-war decline and join the original six in building the European economic community in 1957.

This led to the budget rebate, the single market, the Euro opt-out, the opt-in on justice and home affairs, etc. And yet, ironically, by 2015 we had at last got things just about right in terms of our national interest.

Sadly, the 2015 tory manifesto promise of an in/ out referendum showed nothing had been learnt from Scotland the previous year. This most monumental act of self-harm since the First World War seemed inevitable. All hope ended when Theresa May, in her 2016 conference speech, included the disastrous proclamation that we must leave the single market, customs union and the jurisdiction of the European court of justice.

At four-score years I’ll miss these bilateral deals, but with no energy coming from nuclear power, oil, coal or fracking, I doubt this archipelago in the wastes of the North Atlantic will have much to trade anyway.

JOHN CAMERON Howard Place, St Andrews