Brexit’s Mr Pooter may not survive his dispute with Cummings

Boris Johnson and his former aide are locked in a relationship that is still having damaging consequences for all of us

Before he moved on to lower things, Boris Johnson lived in our neighbourhood, just off the Holloway Road in London's Islington. Another famous Islingtonian who lived off the Holloway Road was the fictional Mr Pooter, protagonist of the Victorian classic Diary of a Nobody.

Mr Pooter's wife was called Carrie, and his close neighbour went by the name of Cummings, of whom on one occasion Pooter writes: Cummings and I have a little misunderstanding."

It may seem like poetic justice that Johnson and Cummings have fallen out, but the awful truth is that they won the battle to diminish this country