Voters want leaders who can save our civilisation

KEIR Starmer and Kemi Badenoch would do well to tune into a classic BBC series if they want inspiration for securing the survival of their parties and to revive Britain.

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They need to stop voters desperate for change and disillusioned with traditional Westminster politics from flocking to Reform UK and the Greens.

Fortunately for the PM and the leader of the Opposition, there is an instructive documentary on iPlayer which provides the sharpest of insights into how once-great societies crack up to create Civilisation, a 13-episode exploration of the wonders of western Europe's greatest ideas, art and architecture. The result is a pioneering work of early colour television, carrying a cautionary warning that even mighty civilisations are "quite fragile".

In the 1969 book to accompany the series, Sir Kenneth wrote: "[If] one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted."

This may send a slight shiver down many a spine in modern Britain, a country where neighbours stop each other on the street to share examples of how "nothing works any more".

People routinely swap horror stories of hours spent in A&E or how loved ones have had long-awaited operations or appointments with a consultant cancelled.

Anyone taking a major journey by train who has not been able to book far ahead faces a gulp-inducing fare and lives in dread of an announcement the journey will be completed on a rail replacement bus service.

People in jobs are working flat-out but without the prospect of a happy retirement. The final-salary pension schemes which gave many the hope of a comfortable old age have largely vanished in the private sector and financial experts routinely issue warnings that millions of us will struggle to make ends meet.

Sir Kenneth warned of "exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity". Such weariness is deepened by the corrosive belief that the UK is a nation in decline.