Britain is in the Last Days of Rome! – David Starkey

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Are we now in the last stages of Rome?

[00:00:03]Depend where the last state where you situate the last stages. Are we 410, the beginning of the end, or are we in the reign of Augustulus Romulus, when the whole thing is going to fall completely to bits? Is Is Starmer the the Romulus Augustulus? I don't think so.

[00:00:25]At least the latter.

[00:00:27]We are clearly undergoing an acute crisis.

[00:00:33]It's general in the West. I think it's particularly acute here.

[00:00:38]It's felt here particularly for a very good reason that we were where it all began.

[00:00:46]If you actually look at the history of I call it Anglo-Britain, England come Britain, we are where modernity actually starts.

[00:00:56]The All the ideas that people like us value, or at least pretend to value, the ideas of limited government, of secure property right, of properly independent judiciary, a known legal system, they all start here. The extraordinary explosion of the mind, of the spirit, the physicality of Britain in the late 17th century following the Glorious Revolution, which is the real enlightenment. It's the moment at which that explosion of Newton, of Locke, of the physical explosion of empire, what we used to call the expansion of Europe.

[00:01:40]It all starts here. So, in some ways, it might be quite appropriate if it started ending here. In the same way, we were the first into industrialization.

[00:01:50]We are arguably the first significant industrial power almost completely to have deindustrialized.

[00:01:59]I see. So, and then I mean there are lots more resemblances and and they are real resemblances, they're not pretend ones. The British Empire has consequences for the modern world that are of the order of Rome in a civilizational sense. The English language is the new Latin and it's doing of course what Latin did roughly the period we're talking about in the 5th century. It's beginning the process of separating out. I mean are difficult to in understanding, for example, much Indian English.

[00:02:34]They is turning into They're turning into separate languages. As with Latin, the written language holds it together.

[00:02:41]The English law, common law, is similarly widely distributed in the world. It It is the basic language by which commerce is negotiated in exactly the same way that Roman law was. So, there are lots and lots of parallels and I suppose if I were being really naughty and you wouldn't expect me to be naughty, would you? Um I would see woke as having much the same impact as Christianity.

[00:03:10]Remember, the great argument of Gibbon's Decline and Fall is that the key to the fall of the Roman Empire is Christianity. that a system of belief which is absolutely antithetical to everything that had made Rome great.

[00:03:26]Um and woke is a Christian heresy. Um woke, if you think about it, is the Magnificat in a slight to a slight extreme extent.

[00:03:36]You know, he shall put down the mighty from their seats and exalt them of low degree. And of course, particularly addressed to a woman and the triumph of feminism is clearly one of the essential elements in the decline of the West in general and I would argue with Britain in particular. That's a really interesting point actually, because so many people are talking at the moment about the fall of Christianity and that being the reason for the fall of whatever we call this, modernity. Do we need Christianity to an extent for to uphold Western traditions? I think I Here again, this is this is where I disagree violently.

[00:04:13]Very inappropriate word about which to talk to use in talking about Christianity, we are told. With Tom with with Holland, who is the one who essentially argues that the foundation of our civilization is either Christianity or this fashionable word Judeo-Christian, so as we can sort of fit the Jews and the Old Testament into it somewhere.

[00:04:37]It is clearly an element, but I can see no evidence that it's the basis of our politics. Our politics is Greco-Roman.

[00:04:47]The language of politics is Greco-Roman.

[00:04:51]We talk about democracy. When we're being rude about democracy democracy obviously the rule of the people, demos.

[00:04:57]When we're being rude about democracy, we switch to Latin and we talk about populism. And the whole language of politics is a classical is is from the classical world, because how on earth And this again, I I've never debated this with Holland. It would be very interesting to do so. How on earth can an open politics possibly derive from a revealed religion?

[00:05:22]The religion in which the basis of it is I am the truth, the light, and the way.

[00:05:29]Where does an idea of the essence of our politics, which is party, the essence that there are conflicting ideas, conflicting ideologies, and neither has an absolute claim to truth. What you do is test them evidentially. Um I think again it is clear to me that Christianity for most of its existence, I mean, when does Christianity become important as religion? Well, it becomes important when it's adopted by the Roman Empire, which is of course an absolute monarchy.

[00:06:04]In other words, Christianity is the vehicle of becomes the vehicle of absolute monarchy. For most of its history, Christianity is entirely happy with absolute monarchy. The Pope is an absolute monarch. Um, of course, sometimes a rather improbable one, as with the strange Argentinian occupant of the throne of St. Peter, but it's still an absolute monarchy. Lots of politics, but it's court politics. It's not the sort of politics that we're talking about. Um, so I'm I'm very skeptical. Where I would concede uh that Christianity's been important isn't the real Christianity. You see, I know a little bit about Christianity, and I would argue real Christianity, because I was brought up a Quaker, a member of the Society of Friends, which in some ways I think really, not in some ways, did genuinely try to um put into practice the precepts of the early church. Um, in other words, um a belief in the abolition of hierarchy, uh in Quakerism, uh there was no use of titles.

[00:07:14]Everybody was addressed by their their forename. You didn't call it the Christian name because they didn't believe in christening, by the forename and by the surname. Uh, there was um a studied simplicity of dress and observe and deliberate refusal to observe formal politeness. I mean, it's very very polite in one sense, but none of the business of really the bowing, the scraping, and whatever that was true of an aristocratic society. Um and Christianity, remember, in its early form is a profoundly radical thing. It rejects wealth. The early Christians refused to reproduce.

[00:07:58]Is that right?

[00:07:58]>> They They believed in the imminent end of the world. They believed in the imminent second coming. So, what we think of as Christianity is a Christianity profoundly adapted to suit many of the customs of late Rome.

[00:08:13]There's a wonderful phrase. It's Christianity made suitable for a Roman gentleman. So, that that they wouldn't feel too awkward. And you see, I think that's the real clue to what Christianity becomes. It becomes a form of Shinto. That's to say, public a kind of um the rituals of public life um and indeed the rituals of the family um and so on with with births, marriages, and deaths, with the ceremonies of of baptism, of marriage, of burying because we need these things. I mean, I am a fairly determined atheist. At least, I think I am. I'm much less confident, if I can put this a bit paradoxically, I'm much less confident about what I don't believe uh than I used to be. I suppose, following James's death 10 years ago, uh 10 years this year, uh you scrutinize yourself in different ways.

[00:09:12]Um but I think I'm still I think I am still an atheist.

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