IT was for Boris a heavenly moment.

His hair more dishevelled than usual, giving him the appearance of sporting a blonde Mohican hair-do, the PM looked up in childlike wonder at the “slightly bonkers” ceiling painting in The Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, dubbed Britain’s Sistine Chapel.

"Look at these well-fed nymphs and cupids and what have you,” gushed Boris. “They are not just celebrating the triumph of liberty and peace and tyranny. This is the settlement of a long and divisive political question about who gets to sit on the throne of England."

Indeed, in this place where Lord Nelson lay in state following Trafalgar, the Minister for the Union, as he set out his Government’s vision of a post-Brexit EU trade deal, could not but help remark how the looming masterpiece by James Thornhill, painted in 1707, represented the “newly-forged United Kingdom on the slipway; this is the moment when it all took off”.

He told his audience of the great and the good of the diplomatic and business worlds: “You know where this is going.” Indeed, they did. And so followed an extended maritime metaphor.

Global Britain’s mission was to “recapture the spirit of those seafaring ancestors immortalised above us whose exploits brought not just riches but something even more important than that; and that was a global perspective.

“That is our ambition,” purred the PM. “There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail…the wind sits in the mast. We are embarked now on a great voyage.” No mention of rocks, storms or hurricanoes.

Indeed, at no point did Admiral Johnson mention the B-word.

"It's not banned,” he insisted. “It's just over. It has happened. It is like the Glorious Revolution that preceded the events chronicled above.

"It is gone - I won't say it's like the Big Bang or the Norman Conquest - but it is receding behind us in history and that's the approach we should take to it," explained the Tory helmsman

Having played hardball with our “EU friends and partners,” warning them the UK would sail away from the negotiating table if they sought to force us into accepting harsh Brussels regulations, Boris turned to the happy horizon that was America and the prospect of a trade deal with The Donald.

He insisted in doing one with the US, Britain would be "governed by science and not mumbo-jumbo" because the potential was "enormous".

The PM urged the "naive and juvenile anti-Americans" in the UK – no names mentioned but they’re sitting on the Labour and SNP benches - to "grow up" and "get a grip".

By sheer coincidence, Boris is due to cross the silver sea to meet Mr T later this month.