It’s been the refrain of the week. Why can’t the country hold on to a prime minister – and how can it be that Larry, the Downing Street cat, has managed to outlast six of them? Have we become ungovernable? Is it because one government after another has failed to halt the slide in living standards – or have online attention spans eroded our patience for change?

But Westminster isn’t the only dramatic platform casting for a new lead at the moment. Amid the political chaos this week, I was struck by a social media comment that this is the first time the UK has found itself looking for a new PM, a new James Bond and a new lead for Doctor Who, all at the same time.

Bond and the Doctor are, after all, some of the most enduring characters in Britain’s postwar national story. So what might it mean that nobody knows who’s running the country, driving the Aston Martin, or piloting the 1960s police box? It seems Britain can no longer agree on who its protagonists are supposed to be.

Start with Bond, whose character was fixed for decades. He was charming and effortlessly competent, irresistible to women and immune to consequence, a cold-war fantasy of continuing white, upper-crust British relevance in a post-colonial world.

That........

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