Andrew Neil’s attack on Horrible Histories shows many aren’t ready to laugh about Brexit just yet

Those worried about a facing a fearful future should apparently just get with the programme now we have officially left the EU, writes Matthew Norman

The war of Brexit has been won and lost. However gruesome recent years have been, the really hard bit is the peace (Getty)

So then, how’s that bringing-the-country-back-together trope working out for you?

Day three in our reclaimed sovereignty wonderland is obviously the earliest of doors. I say it’s obvious, though for the likes of Douglas Carswell it appears otherwise.

Carswell was one of various Brexity sages to wait hours after withdrawal before crowing that the dire warnings about post-Brexit life had already been ridiculed.

You may remember similar triumphalist eruptions, along “mission accomplished” lines, straight after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. That critics of the invasion – who never suggested overpowering Saddam Hussein’s army would be difficult, but were petrified about the aftermath – were conveniently ignored.

So it is with this nasty little national nervous breakdown of ours. The war of Brexit has been won and lost. However gruesome recent years have been, the really hard bit is the peace.

A useful pointer to just how hard was quick to present itself. The letter pinned to the door of a Norwich apartment block, cautioning residents against speaking in funny foreign tongues, was instantly followed by the outrage about “British Things”, that Horrible Histories sketch from 2009.

On its surface, this two-minute song might not seem wildly controversial. It involves a butler educating Queen Victoria that the ingredients of her breakfast beverage weren’t exclusively home grown.

He points out that the tea (“For your cuppa, thousands died and many wars were fought”) emanated from India, while the sugar had been harvested by African-born slaves in her Caribbean dominions.

None of this is disputable as historical fact, as even Andrew Neil was happy to accept. What propelled him to his default apoplexy was the Brexit-themed slant lent the sketch by Nish Kumar’s introduction. To Neil, this humorous and apparently uncontentious children’s entertainment constituted “anti-British drivel”.

“Was any of the licence fee used,” he tweeted, “to produce something purely designed to demean us?”

Now naturally one appreciates Neil’s rigorous expectation of BBC impartiality. Heaven knows how he’d cope if the corporation started hiring former Murdoch editors and out-and-proud Thatcherites as political interviewers. Jocose references to inarguable historical fact are as close to his tolerance threshold as anyone with a heart would wish him thrust.

But in this heated debate about the distant past, as inexplicably misrouted from the All Soul’s high table, is a vignette of the present and a glimpse into the future – and reassuring in any way it is not.

Trapped in this infinity loop of imbecilic hysteria, you can’t help feeling like a character condemned to eternal torment by a capricious god in Greek myth.

But it isn’t Greek, and it isn’t mythical. This is another of those British Things. And it’s happening, however unlikely the surreality makes it seem, in real time.

How Britain came to join the United States in the bullies’ back row of the geopolitcal remedial class is a matter for a Horrible Histories episode in 2120. The passage of a century should provide enough perspective to dissuade most people from conflating a historical account with outright treachery.

For now, the savage cruelties of the age combine with its domineering stupidities to form a brooding peasouper of despair.

Last week, an inquest reported into the death six months ago of a black Briton. Errol Graham died of starvation after being denied his benefits. When discovered in his Nottingham flat, his body weighed four and half stone.

As I write, this site hosts a story about a woman whose disability payment was confiscated (since reinstated thanks to the embarrassing publicity) because she can walk a few feet.

But one shouldn’t dwell on such cases, let alone on the many posthumous recipients of official letters declaring them fit for work, for fear of demeaning Britain.

Talking up Britain, as our prime minister will confirm, is the beacon to illuminate the post-Brexit path to restored national glory. In this lambent light, I call on the BBC to cancel Horrible Histories, and replace it with Cutesy Chronicles.

Recalling how he loved parading his scandalously underrated comedy chops on This Week, when the gurning and clowning placed pulverising pressure on even the doughtiest of sphincters, Andrew Neil would be the go-to guy for that one.

In the first episode, he and Michael Portillo could relate in song how every ivory tusk on a stately home wall was taken from Skegness’s indigenous herd – and only then after the elephant died of natural causes.

Other sketches under the “More British Things” banner might include The Opium Wars of Inverness, The Hastings-St Leonards Partition, and of course The Black Hole of Clacton-on-Sea.

As for Lisa Nandy and her efforts to change the E of the OBE to “Excellence”, partly on chronology grounds, she’ll feel a right charlie when she hears Neil trilling: “Let traitors sneer and snowflakes cry/ This empire of ours shall never die.”

So then, all you Horrible Histories apologists out there, listen up. This trashing of Britain has to stop, and it has to stop now. Apart from anything else, in this Pernicious Present and facing a Fearful Future, the one task Britain is abundantly qualified to execute to perfection is trashing herself.