CORRECT me if I’m wrong (all right, form a queue; crivvens, we haven’t even started yet), but it struck me as a departure from established protocol when the former Vote Leave campaign director, Dominic Cummings, described the current Brexit Secretary, David Davis, as “thick as mince”.

Mr Cummings further clarified matters by adding that Mr Davis was as “lazy as a toad”. I do not propose to deal here with the latter allegation, as incisive commentary relating to the amphibious beastie Bufo bufo is beyond my pay grade.

For what it is worth, I hadn’t noticed that the common toad was particularly idle but, pressed to consider the matter more deeply, will own that it does have a habit of sitting aboot looking glaikit.

On the wider matter of protocol, it could be argued that, once more, I have chosen my hat as a means through which to communicate, since Mr Cummings is not an elected politician subject to Westminster rules.

All the same, his strong words caused decent ratepayers to reach for the fortified wine. Apart from anything else, I didn’t know that English people ate mince. On reflection, it should be obvious since, clearly, they eat burgers like normal people. But I had not supposed that they ate mince and tatties, much as we Scots do not eat salad.

My researchers tell me that Mr Cummings was born in Durham, so perhaps that accounts for it. He is part of Greater Scotland.

All the same, my stupidity on the mince question hints at a deeper malaise. To wit: I am so unremittingly dense I could be a government minister. The problem is genetic. I come from a long Leith line of Robert McNeils, all “wooden-headed”, though I was surprised, in the course of genealogical researches, to find that it said this on their marriage certificates.

Where my ancestors had to append their signatures, they inevitably did so with the letter X. They were the original X-Men, but without any special powers, though I’m told my great-grandfather could play the mouth-organ with his buttocks.

Thus my credentials. But what of Mr Davis? Let us agree that he is, so to say, inadequately nuanced. But what of it? A Labour MP once told the House of Commons: “There are a lot of thick people out there, and somebody has to represent them.”

That was a good point, well made. If large swathes of the electorate are unintelligent then surely, in a representative democracy, a fair amount of MPS or MSPs – Labour and Conservative certainly – must be too.

The intelligence of The People is obviously a sensitive matter, and so I asked knowledgeable friends about the most valid means of approaching the subject. And they said you could rarely go wrong by taking a broad brush approach to entire social groupings on the grounds of, say, age. So, to be on the safe side, let’s do that.

Quite clearly, three age groups drag down democracy. Firstly, the young, whose brains have not fully matured. They make up the majority of virtue-signalling liberals determined to brig down western civilisation with their narcissistic altruism.

At present, they’re obsessed with Donald Trump, just because – irony alert! – he’s the thickest world statesman in history. They approach the ice cream-haired dumbass from the vantage point of a hoity-toity “socialism” that tacitly detests democracy and the idea that the lower orders should have the vote.

There are amusing videos on YouTube of these millennials condemning in the harshest terms a list of quotes and even policies that they’re led to believe are President Trump’s, only for it to be revealed that they were Barack Obama’s.

More fiercely judgmental than the Spanish Inquisition, they are dumber than dumb. And who led them to be like this? Correct: our second degenerate demographic, the even dumber middle-aged, who control public discourse in our politically correct society and who haven’t had an original thought since their last undergraduate sociology seminar in 1983.

Their tropes have ossified, which brings us nicely to our third controversial group, the elderly. In the course of a varied and interesting life, I have met some of these, and it is fair to say that, on the whole, their political views would make David Icke blanch. Grey hair coming in is clearly caused by grey matter going out.

And that is where Mr Davis comes in. For, while it’s undoubtedly true that only our last delineated demographic would vote for this particular poltroon, they are all thick – and all deserve representation.

In that sense, while – dense or otherwise – you and I may not fit into any of these age groups, we would have to admit that, seasoned with salt and burping toad-like in brown gravy, David Davis is Britain’s most representative MP.