George Monbiot

Opposite stories with an identical narrative structure.

Then, in 2008, the neoliberal story fell apart and its opponents came forward with...

Nothing.

No new restoration story.

The best they had to offer was a watered-down neoliberalism or a microwaved Keynesianism.

And that is why we're stuck.

Without that new story, we are stuck with the old failed story that keeps on failing.

Despair is the state we fall into when our imagination fails.

When we have no story that explains the present and describes the future, hope evaporates.

Political failure is at heart a failure of imagination.

Without a restoration story,

that can tell us where we need to go, nothing is going to change.

But with such a restoration story, almost everything can change.

The story we need to tell

is a story which will appeal to as wide a range of people as possible, crossing political fault lines.

It should resonate with deep needs and desires.

It should be simple and intelligible.

And it should be grounded in reality.

Now, I admit that all this sounds like a bit of a tall order.

But I believe that in Western nations, there is actually a story like this waiting to be told.