George Monbiot

And that choice should be exercised as much as possible at the local level.

If something can be decided locally, it shouldn't be determined nationally.

And I call all this the politics of belonging.

Now, I think this has got the potential to appeal across quite a wide range of people.

And the reason for this is that among the very few values that both left and right share,

are belonging and community.

And we might mean slightly different things by them, but at least we start with some language in common.

In fact, you can see a lot of politics as being a search for belonging.

Even fascists seek community, albeit a frighteningly homogenous community where everyone looks the same and wears the same uniform and chants the same slogans.

What we need to create is a community based on bridging networks, not bonding networks.

Now, a bonding network brings together people from a homogenous group, whereas a bridging network brings together people from different groups.

And my belief is that if we create sufficiently rich and vibrant bridging communities, we can thwart the urge for people to burrow into the security of a homogenous bonding community defending themselves against the other.

So, in summary, our new story could go something like this.

Disorder afflicts the land, caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of people who say there's no such thing as society, who tell us that our highest purpose in life is to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin.

But the heroes of the story, us, will revolt against this disorder.

We will fight those nefarious forces by building rich, engaging, inclusive and generous communities.

And in doing so, we will restore harmony to the land.

Now, whether or not you feel this is the right story, I hope you'll agree that we need one.

We need a new restoration story which is going to guide us out of the mess we're in, which tells us why we're in the mess and tells us how to get out of that mess.

And that story, if we tell it right, will infect the minds of people across the political spectrum.