Summary
The restoration story is George Monbiot’s name for a plot he says successful political movements share. The land has been thrown into disorder by powerful forces working against ordinary people; a hero, who may be a whole people, takes them on, wins against the odds and restores order. The writer and Guardian columnist sets it out in ‘Out of the Wreckage’ (2017).
His claim is that post-war social democracy and neoliberalism each rose by telling a version of it, with different villains and heroes, and that a failing ideology is only displaced by a new story of the same shape. His own candidate is a ‘politics of belonging’.
Rationale
Monbiot’s plot was on the table when this inquiry began. We’ve since come to doubt its shape as much as its content: heroes defeating villains to restore harmony still needs one story and an enemy.
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