Charles Darwin has interrupted his 136-year death to correct a fundamental error in his seminal “On the Origin of Species”.

While many of Darwin’s assertions remain unquestionably true, such as religion being utterly batshit and pigeons being dinosaurs in disguise, the bearded Victorian revenant apologised for underestimating humanity’s ability to produce Brexit.

“Look, I’m sorry. My fundamental hypothesis was that humanity would, in common with higher species, tend towards improvement,” Darwin told a Billericay seance. “Obviously there were setbacks along the way, but I did assume that once democracy had taken hold the trend towards collaboration and mutual betterment would accelerate.”

“But the scientific method is very demanding, and your theory is only right until the facts prove it wrong. Not only do we now have Brexit, we have Boris Johnson, Trump, and other populist simpletons breaking out across the world. Humanity is quite clearly hell-bent on self-destruction so I’m just going to have to go back to the drawing board.”

“Maybe God did just want to trick us all by burying those huge bones everywhere. And if God’s a twat then it goes a long way towards explaining Jacob Rees-Mogg”, Darwin said.