I have said for a long time that people may need to feel more pain before they wake up to what is happening around them.
I do not say that because I want anybody to suffer. I say it because people often ignore a problem while it belongs to somebody else. It becomes real only when the energy bill lands on their own doormat, they cannot get a doctor's appointment, their rent rises beyond reach or full-time work no longer pays the household bills.
Some people have reached that point already. Many more are struggling than they care to admit.
That has made me wonder whether we are witnessing the early stages of civilisation beginning to break down—not complete collapse, with the lights out and the Government gone, but a slower erosion of the things that allow a civilised society to function: trust, fairness, security, responsibility, community and a shared belief in the future.
We were not wealthy, but we managed
When people look back seventy years, they sometimes make life sound easier than it really was. It was not. I remember people having food “on tick” at the local shop and sometimes missing the rent. That seemed quite common. Families struggled, homes could be cold, and many people had very little spare money.
But a full-time wage was generally expected to provide the foundations of family life. Providing did not mean foreign holidays, a new car or expensive presents for every child. It meant rent, food on the table, clothes—often handed down—and some sort of Christmas.
I remember a family with seven children who had less than my brother and me. A bicycle for Christmas might have been passed down from somebody else. My brother and I might receive one train set between us. Yet we were grateful, excited and happy.
The fact that something was second-hand did not diminish its value. The bicycle meant freedom; the train set meant hours playing together. We valued what an object allowed us to experience rather than what its price or brand said about us.
People also made do and still found room for a laugh and a pint. Local shops were plentiful: butchers, bakers, greengrocers, newsagents and corner shops. They were not merely places where money changed hands. People were known there. A shopkeeper might extend a little credit because they knew the family and understood the circumstances. It was an informal safety net built upon personal trust.
We should not romanticise the past. Class barriers were strong, women had fewer choices, domestic abuse and other crimes were often hidden, and many people had to accept conditions that should never have been accepted. But hardship existed inside stronger communities and a more recognisable social structure.
When work no longer provides security
The disturbing difference today is that we have had seventy years of technological progress, increased productivity and extraordinary national wealth, yet many households with people working full time still cannot reliably afford housing, heating, food, childcare and transport.
If you work, contribute and behave responsibly, you should be able to build a modest but secure life.
When that promise fails, people reasonably ask what they are working for. They may still have a smartphone, television and car, but those possessions do not necessarily represent security. The car may be on finance, the holiday on a credit card and the groceries paid through an overdraft. Modern credit allows hardship to remain hidden long after the household has become financially fragile.
Years ago, somebody might simply say, “I can't afford that until payday.” Today many people feel compelled to pretend everything is fine. They decline an invitation by saying they are busy rather than admitting they cannot afford to go. Each struggling person looks at everybody else's public appearance and assumes they alone are failing.
The old shopkeeper's tick has been replaced by credit cards, overdrafts and buy-now-pay-later accounts. The hardship has not disappeared; it has become private, impersonal and potentially more expensive.
Measuring human worth through possessions
Material things have increasingly become the way people measure both their own value and everybody else's. The car, house, phone, trainers, clothes and holidays form a public scorecard.
Advertising first creates dissatisfaction and then sells a product as the cure. A perfectly good camera must be upgraded. A working phone suddenly appears inadequate. A £200 pair of trainers is made to feel like part of somebody's identity rather than something worn on their feet.
Social media intensifies this pressure. We compare the unedited reality of our lives with somebody else's carefully selected display. We see the holiday photograph but not the credit-card bill, the new car but not the monthly payments, and the smiling family but not the row they had five minutes earlier.
Comparison then becomes resentment. Instead of thinking, “How can more people have that security?”, the response becomes, “Why should they have it when I do not?” People see a mortgage-free pensioner but not the decades of work and sacrifice behind the result. They see a claimant receiving help but not the illness, disability or crisis that created the need.
Workers are turned against benefit claimants, young people against pensioners, tenants against homeowners, British-born workers against migrants, and healthy people against disabled people. Ordinary people fight over the remaining pieces while the deeper causes of insecurity escape serious attention.
A colder and more divided society
This resentment creates a vicious circle. Financial pressure produces fear. Fear encourages comparison. Comparison becomes jealousy and blame. Blame weakens sympathy and community. Weaker communities leave people more isolated and insecure, starting the cycle again.
Increasingly, some people seem to enjoy watching others fail. When somebody loses a job, a business collapses or a public figure makes a mistake, criticism turns into humiliation and entertainment. Compassion becomes conditional: people will care about somebody's hardship only after deciding that the person deserves their sympathy.
Online platforms reward this behaviour because anger and cruelty attract attention. Quiet acts of decency rarely become viral. Thousands may sympathise without commenting, while a handful of vicious remarks dominate the screen. This can make cold-heartedness look more universal than it really is, but it also encourages others to copy it.
Civilisation depends upon people recognising one another's humanity even when their circumstances differ.
Institutions that still exist but inspire less confidence
People struggled in the past, but institutions generally carried greater authority. The police officer, teacher, doctor, council, church and courts were respected—sometimes too unquestioningly. Serious wrongdoing could be concealed precisely because authority was rarely challenged.
We should not restore blind deference. But we have removed much of the old automatic respect without replacing it with consistently trustworthy and effective authority.
The police, courts, health service, councils and Government continue to operate, but many people no longer expect them to respond properly. Minor crime, shoplifting, vandalism, threatening behaviour, lengthy waiting lists and neglected public spaces begin to feel normal. The most serious warning is not the individual failure; it is the population becoming accustomed to failure.
A civilised society relies upon most people following the rules even when nobody is watching. They do that because they believe the rules are broadly fair, that other people will follow them and that institutions will deal with those who do not. If honest people repeatedly see responsibility going unrewarded and rules applied inconsistently, their cooperation cannot be taken for granted forever.
Fear as a daily product
On top of the cost-of-living pressure comes a constant stream of frightening online material: war with Russia, conscription, former soldiers being recalled up to 65, emergency food supplies, Agenda 2030 and even claims that elites intend to reduce the world's population to 500 million.
Some of these stories begin with a genuine fact. Britain has proposed widening recall arrangements for certain former service personnel, including raising the maximum age for some from 55 to 65. That is not the same as conscripting the general public. Agenda 2030 is a real United Nations framework containing goals on poverty, health, education, inequality and the environment. It is not evidence of a plan to kill most of humanity.
The 500-million figure is commonly traced to an inscription on the Georgia Guidestones, an anonymously commissioned American monument erected in 1980—not to an Agenda 2030 target or binding international policy.
But online, a real fact is removed from its context, connected to a separate claim and presented as proof of a secret plan. A million views then give the claim an authority it has not earned. Viewing figures measure attention, not truth.
People who are already worrying about food and energy are told to store several days of emergency supplies. Sensible preparation may be affordable for some, but somebody stretching the cupboard until payday cannot necessarily buy four days of extra food. They are left thinking, “Other people are preparing for the emergency, and I cannot even prepare for Tuesday.”
The message from society increasingly seems to be: provide your own housing, protect your own retirement, absorb higher bills, manage your own mental health and prepare your own household for a national emergency. If you cannot cope, it is treated as a personal failure.
That is not collective resilience. Civilisation is supposed to create collective security.
Are we poking the Russian bear?
I am also concerned that Britain is antagonising Russia—“poking the bear,” as people say. Russia invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine has the right to defend itself. Supporting an invaded country does not automatically mean Britain wants a war with Russia.
However, deterrence and escalation can look remarkably similar from opposing sides. More powerful weapons, broader permission for their use, expanded reserves and increasingly aggressive language all alter the calculation. Even if Britain regards its actions as defensive, Russia may interpret them differently. With nuclear-armed powers, miscalculation is an enormous danger.
Doing nothing would also carry a risk: it could teach a powerful country that force succeeds whenever it frightens everybody else sufficiently. The choice should not be reduced to either surrender or endless escalation.
A responsible policy requires credible defence, clear limits, reliable communication and relentless diplomacy. Restraint is not weakness, and diplomacy is not surrender. If political leaders speak constantly about preparing for war but rarely explain how they are trying to prevent one, the public will naturally become frightened.
Collapse or erosion?
Have we proved that civilisation is collapsing? Not quite. Britain has not reached total collapse. Food is distributed, electricity flows, elections take place, laws function, and millions of decent people continue working, caring, volunteering and helping their neighbours.
But we are seeing warning signs of civilisational erosion:
- Full-time work no longer guarantees basic security.
- Financial hardship is widespread but concealed.
- Material possessions are used to measure human worth.
- Resentment is replacing solidarity.
- Communities are losing shops, pubs and everyday meeting places.
- Institutions retain their names but are losing capacity and trust.
- Disorder and poor services are increasingly accepted as normal.
- Social media rewards fear, division and claims that cannot be disproved.
- Governments treat connected problems as isolated crises.
- More people experience the future as a threat rather than a promise.
Society still looks normal from the outside, but growing numbers no longer believe its rules, institutions or promises work for them.
Collapse is not inevitable. Britain still possesses wealth, knowledge, infrastructure, democratic traditions and millions of fundamentally decent people. But those are resources with which recovery could be built; they are not proof that recovery is already happening.
No single political party can repair something this broad during one term in office. MPs of every party need to be singing from the same hymn sheet about the foundations: affordable essentials, worthwhile employment, housing, dependable public services, consistent justice, honest information and stronger communities.
Above all, ordinary people must stop treating one another as the enemy. Another person's modest security is not the cause of our insecurity. We should judge a civilisation not by the wealth displayed at the top, but by whether an ordinary person who works, contributes and behaves responsibly can live with dignity—and whether those who cannot work are still treated as human beings.
Civilisations rarely disappear in a single dramatic moment. They weaken when failure becomes normal, cruelty becomes acceptable and people lose faith in one another. If that is where Britain is heading, recognising it honestly is not pessimism. It is the first necessary step towards changing direction.