George Monbiot

And in politics, there is one basic plot which turns out to be tremendously powerful.

And I call this the restoration story.

It goes as follows.

Disorder afflicts the land, caused by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity.

But the hero will revolt against this disorder, fight those powerful forces against the odds, overthrow them and restore harmony to the land.

You've heard this story before.

It's the Bible story.

It's the Harry Potter story.

It's the Lord of the Rings story.

It's the Narnia story.

But it's also the story that has accompanied almost every political and religious transformation going back millennia.

In fact, we could go as far as to say that without a powerful new restoration story,

a political and religious transformation might not be able to happen.

It's that important.

After laissez-faire economics triggered the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write a new economics, and what he did was to tell a restoration story.

And it went something like this.

Disorder afflicts the land.

caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of the economic elite, which have captured the world's wealth.

But the hero of the story, the enabling state, supported by working-class and middle-class people, will contest that disorder, will fight those powerful forces by redistributing wealth, and through spending public money on public goods, will generate income and jobs

restoring harmony to the land.