I know I should be grateful to this country for taking me in and giving me a relatively comfortable life. I have often taken advantage of the facilities offered by the medical fraternity and although I don’t claim many of the benefits to which I am entitled, I survive financially which is more than I could do in most places.

And it is a very beautiful country too. At the moment I am house sitting in picturesque Sheepscombe, a small village set deep in a Cotswold valley. The views are magnificent and the tranquillity of the area is soothing. Mind you the whole place is blanketed by fog and heavy rain as I write! On Friday I will go home to different but equally inspiring scenery – the wild open spaces of Dartmoor. The weather will doubtless be foul but one can put up with that in such stunning surroundings.

And then there is the history of Britain, always so apparent in ruins dating back through the ages. I often sit with my back against chiselled and obviously carefully placed rocks on the Moor and wonder who put them there and what they were for. Most of them have been in place for thousands of years and nobody knows much about the good folk who set them up originally.

Oh yes, Britain has a great deal going for it and is a place that suits me as my dotage approaches. What I do not understand is the people. Oh there are undoubtedly many lovely folk, but taken en masse, they seem querulous, mean-spirited and unwilling to espouse any views that go contrary to their own. Take the Brexit debacle for instance. We are told that this is a democracy, but the leave side in the 2016 referendum won by over a million votes. That is a pretty substantial majority, but three years later, Britain is still part of Europe and now a big chunk of the political class are threatening to bring the current government down if Boris Johnson is elected leader and tries to get out of Europe without a ‘deal.’

What is this ‘deal’ business all about anyway? When one resigns from a club or any other organisation, one doesn’t make a deal with the management – particularly when that management is unelected in the first place. The referendum vote said nothing about deals damnit! The ballot paper merely differentiated between leave and remain. Mrs Maybe dithered and filly-faddled around without having the moral strength to go with her convictions and give Britain her independence. How often did we hear her say ‘no deal is better than a bad deal?’ How often did we hear her pledge to take us out of Europe by 29th March? Time and time again I am afraid, then she pitifully tried to get her mish-mash of a bad deal through Parliament three times, despite getting a figurative bloody nose on all three occasions.

Now we have Johnson pledging to get us out with or without a deal by the end of October and already the knives are out. Admittedly, having a flaming row with your popsy in a block of flats at the dead of night was a bit daft, but even worse was the neighbour Tom Penn recording the shouting and sending the recording to that most left wing of newspapers, The Guardian who gleefully brought it out into the open. Wasn’t it The Guardian who campaigned against journalists bugging telephones, not so long ago? They obviously apply different standards to bugging of private rows.

Ah well… I know from personal experience the moral hypocrisy of the Media.

Anyway, I feel that the current uproar over Johnson and his private life will ultimately go in his favour although a newspaper piece from that excellent scribbler, Max Hastings gave me cause for concern this morning. Hastings used to be Johnson’s boss – on the Spectator I think – and he feels that although he is a likeable buffoon, Johnson would not be good for the country.

Who would among the current crop of failures and misfits masquerading as our political leaders I wonder. Not one of them seems to care a fig for the people whose views they are supposed to be representing.

Oh Britain, Britain – how great thou aren’t any more. Your spine has been crushed by greed and personal ambition shared out among political pygmies.

I will stay here a bit longer though! Viewed from the side, the current turmoil is quite interesting. Will they all kill each other off or will they allow a smirking Jeremy Corbyn to sneak into No 10 via the side door. If that happens I don’t think I will be the only one who abandons ship.