Here's the latest entry in the diary of Rupert St John-Fontaine, adviser at the Department of Social Affairs...

IF you’re reading this it means I’m already dead or am currently residing under an assumed name in the Turks and Caicos Islands. I’m not sure which is the more preferable, really. Being sent to the Turks and Caicos is very often simply the postponement of the inevitable for a few months.

The miscreant, having been deemed an enemy of the state, is given the prospect of a new life in our favourite tax haven. The chap is lulled into a false sense of security and begins to sing like Adele on two bottles of fortified wine, confessing all manner of bizarre and contrived falsehoods.

Within a year a sort of malevolent auction is triggered among rogue states to carry out an assassination on our man. In exchange for a few competitively-priced arms contracts, these states – China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Gibraltar – duly undertake the job and a small death notice is placed in The Telegraph.

It’s what happened to Lord Lucan and John Stonehouse (although in the case of Stonehouse, the spooks decided that it might cause less damage to bring him back and accuse him of faking his own death).

They even kidnapped Shergar. MI5’s justification for knocking off the legendary bay was that their code-breakers had spotted a pattern in its neighs and whinnies that suggested he’d been nobbled by the Soviets and was being used to convey signals to sleeper agents in the UK.

I had been experiencing a feeling of deep foreboding from the start of the week. Nicola was suddenly uncontactable, despite having promised to have supper with me on her visit to Westminster last week. I also spotted the same black 4x4 parked outside my mews flat in Kensington.

And my date with Felicity Wormwood-Scrubs after she propositioned me at Rishi Sunak’s leadership bash seemed almost too good to be true. I’ve never been a natural at the dating game and Felicity’s overtures seemed to have come from nowhere.

Our dinner at Boninsegna & Riva’s in Marylebone was also a curious affair. This was one of the smartest new eateries in London, but tonight only two other couples were in situ.

My suspicions were confirmed when Felicity suddenly got up from the table on the pretext of powdering her nose. Yet she had tears in her eyes and said: “I’m so sorry, Roopy darling. They told me they’d report my coke habit to my bosses at The Telegraph if I didn’t agree to this.”

Suddenly, the two other couples sprang from their tables. I was hooded, cuffed and led out through a back entrance before being bundled into a car. After a short journey I was led into a building before they unhooded me in a squalid little cellar that stank of stale Valpolicella.

“I’m afraid the game’s up, Mr St John Fontaine. We know about your covert activities and you are now officially an enemy of the state.”

“With what am I being charged? And what about my rights?”

“You’re now the property of MI5 and you don’t have any rights. The more you tell us; the better your chances of surviving.”

“This must be a grotesque mistake.”

“Don’t mess with us. We’ve been on to you for months.

“We know you’ve been turned by the Scottish Government and are now acting for them. We know you’ve been consorting with a Russian hit squad and have been directly responsible for at least three unlawful deaths. And we know about your little gun-running operation with the man who calls himself Colonel Oleg.”

My situation is hopeless. It seems they apprehended Oleg and his team after greed got the better of them and they tried to blackmail Grant Shapps into getting a slice of the action on the HS2 rail link. In return for safe passage back to Ukraine they offered me up and told them that I was blackmailing them for kickbacks.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the harsh light I realised with mounting horror that my two interrogators were also present at the Black Mass in the Downing Street Rose Garden last year.

“We also know that you stumbled on our little secret society and that you know about Margaret Thatcher the vampire queen in her lair underneath Number 10.

“And that you were threatening to use this as propaganda in the independence struggle.

“Well, Sturgeon has now disavowed you after we told her you were a double-double agent. And that you were working for us all along.”

There is a beating of giant wings outside and something is scraping at the door. A high-pitched wail that seems to come from the depths of Hell itself can be heard.

“There is no such thing as society. There is no such thing as society.”

I begin to clutch my crucifix.