George Monbiot

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.

Now, like all good restoration stories, this one resonated across the political spectrum.

Democrats and Republicans, Labour and Conservatives, left and right, all became broadly Keynesian.

Then when Keynesianism ran into trouble in the 1970s, the neoliberals, people like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, came forward with their new restoration story.

And it went something like this.

You never guess what's coming.

Disorder afflicts the land.

caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of the overmighty state, whose collectivizing tendencies crush freedom and individualism and opportunity.

But the hero of the story, the entrepreneur, will fight those powerful forces, roll back the state, and through creating wealth and opportunity, restore harmony to the land.

And that story also resonated across the political spectrum.

Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and Labour, they all became broadly neoliberal.