100 days after Brexit... and this is what Britain looks like

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Good morning it’s eight o'clock on Thursday 6 October. You’re listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 with me John Humphrys.

The waiting’s over. In just a few moments we’ll be speaking to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Fresh from his leadership election victory at Conservative Party conference yesterday. But first the news headlines.

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Trillions were wiped from the value of British pension funds for a second successive day yesterday as the Index of Leading Shares fell to levels not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008.

Chancellor Michael Gove will outline cuts to front-line services in an emergency budget scheduled for next week as the government struggles to come to terms with what the IFS warns may be a "deep and long lasting recession".

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that a second independence referendum will be in the Scottish National Party’s manifesto at the next Holyrood election. The announcement ends months of speculation after Scottish voters overwhelmingly voted to remain a member of the European Union in the nationwide referendum in June.

Police confirm arson is suspected at a Devon food processing plant which burned to the ground on Friday. It is the third Devon pasty manufacturer believed to have been deliberately targeted since Cornish pasties lost their special EU protected status as a result of June’s Brexit vote.

England manager Alan Pardew has warned players and fans "to keep their feet on the ground" after England’s World Cup qualification campaign began with a 1 - 0 victory over Malta at Wembley.

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Now. He led a campaign that railed against "unelected, unaccountable elites" and without so much as a solitary paper entering a single ballot box, old Etonian and Bullingdon Club veteran Boris Johnson is the 75th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. He joins me now. Prime Minister. Good morning.

Good morning, John.

Let’s start with that, shall we. Unelected. Undemocratic. That’s what you said about the European Union and here you are, the nation’s Prime Minister, without anyone having voted for you. Bit of a joke isn’t it?

Au contraire, John, au contraire, as they say in such places from whence we are now liberated. The British system is one of parliamentary democracy and it has always been thus. To delegate a single parliamentarian as primus inter pares is a responsibility that has never been the responsibility of the electorate directly to confer and as such I am no different to any Prime Minister that has gone before or will go hence.

So you’ve been appointed not by the people but by their elected representatives is that what you’re saying?

That is indeed what I am saying, yes.

Because that’s precisely how EU Commissioners are appointed in Brussels but anyway we’ll move on. The NHS, Prime Minister. Four months ago you drove to every corner of this land in a bus with a sign on the side that said £350m a week would be saved if we left the EU, and that money would go to the NHS. People took you at your word, and now we have left the EU, and as was forewarned the economy is in meltdown and cuts to the NHS are unavoidable. That’s indefensible isn’t it?

Err, now, John, now you know as well as I do that a slogan painted down the side of a bus cannot possibly be considered a direct spending commitment.

But that’s what it said. "We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead."

And we will, John. It will be another two years before the UK can formally leave the EU and that taxpayer money can be wrenched free from the Flanders kleptocracy and in the meantime we face severe economic challenges.

But these economic challenges are self-inflicted. Or rather not self-inflicted but inflicted by you, for your own personal gain, are they not?

John, the people of this country voted to take back control. To take back sovereignty. To take back democracy. To take back what was once the inalienable natural right of national self-governance. We are all Athenians now. Last week, I was at a child’s birthday party and there in the corner, was an eight-year-old girl happily blowing up a balloon. Freedom isn’t Free, John, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau said in "Team America: World Police", and at no point did I or anyone else make any secret about the fact that if you want to eat prawn cocktail crisps you will have to suffer what will we all hope will be a relatively short recession.

As you no doubt know, you are now the 75th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as you no doubt know you will probably be the last. The Scottish Conservatives have already broken away from the party you now lead. And Scotland itself is now set on a course that will lead to the breakup of this nation. We’re paying a heavy price to have you as Prime Minister, aren’t we?

Now, now. In 2014 Scotland was given a choice and voted to remain part of this nation, and four months ago this nation voted to leave the European Union. What an affront to the very democracy this nation so triumphantly wrested back from Brussels if the Scottish National Party believe these two independent democratic mandates can now be conjoined to form some ghastly two-headed tartan hydra, Sturgeon on one appendage, Salmond on the other, barking threats at the people of Britain. And they’ll have to join the euro.

But who wouldn’t want to join the euro? A croissant in Paris currently costs £7.80.

I don’t think Scottish people eat croissants, John.

Immigration. You said that the numbers coming into this country couldn’t be controlled, that we must "take back control" of our borders. Four months on and the projected figures on migration are higher than ever. Racially motivated attacks have gone up ten fold, and the referendum has been blamed. You’ll never be able to take back control, will you?

What I said was we would have control over who would come into this country. Filipino nurses, Indian anaesthetists in the place of unfettered and uncontrolled immigration from within the EU.

But the pressure on public services that you and Nigel Farage described, and you must take responsibility for what he said because he won you this referendum, is because of the number. The 350,000 number. An Indian anaesthetist takes the same GP appointments as a Polish plumber, the children of a Filipino nurse take the same primary school places as the children of a Latvian lino-fitter. It is the number, that people want reducing. And you are not going to reduce it. People are angry. They feel they have been lied to.

Now, John, my grandfather was a Turkish...

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*Silence*

“Oh, bollocks to this,” says Dave to Samantha, “I’ve switched it off.” The sunlight breaks through the curtains. “Lanzarote’s lovely in October, isn’t it?”