Further exploration of the particle assemblage will need more and more public expenditure. I think that where big science is failing to make the case for further experiments of the kind under discussion is that to the vast majority of the people who globally fund them it is hard for them to think of anything more completely irrelevant to their day to day lives.
Yes perhaps in the equations of string theory there is a chance that all that we know exists at a confluence of two branes who, as I type are drifting apa...........
Science is notorious at populising it's discoveries and making them at least interesting to ordinary people. Cox tries his best but as an egotistic narcissist who is all over every programme he, and his fellow narcissists the BBC put out, all hope for public support for big science begins to wane.
We need to stop the popularisation of science from being hi-jacked by over-ambitious egotists like Cox and his ilk and give young science grads custody of the poisoned chalice. At least, being young, they have half a chance of appealing to a generation that thinks everyone older than them is an object of pity unless you're Einstein say, or Schrodinger, who at least produced equations that can be shown to reveal them as representing the pinnacle of human (even if in the case of Schrodinger it may have been post-coital) cognitive brilliance.