The new political story that could change everything

Do you feel trapped

in a broken economic model?

A model that's trashing the living world

and threatens the lives
of our descendants?

A model that excludes billions of people

while making a handful unimaginably rich?

That sorts us into winners and loser,

and then blames the losers
for their misfortune?

Welcome to neoliberalism,

the zombie doctrine
that never seems to die,

however comprehensively it is discredited.

Now, you might have imagined
that the Financial Crisis of 2008

would have led to the collapse
of neoliberalism.

After all, it exposed
its central features,

which were deregulating,
business and finance,

tearing down public protections,

throwing us into extreme
competition with each other,

as, well, just a little bit flawed.

And intellectually, it did collapse.

But still, it dominates our lives.

Why?

Well, I believe the answer
is that we have not yet produced

a new story with which to replace it.

Stories are the means by which
we navigate the world.

They allow us to interpret its complex
and contradictory signals.

When we want to make sense of something,

the sense we seek is not scientific sense

but narrative fidelity.

Does what we are hearing reflect the way

that we expect humans
and the world to behave?

Does it hang together?

Does it progress

as a story should progress?

Now, we are creatures of narrative,

and a string of facts and figures,
however important facts and figures are --

and, you know, I'm an empiricist,
I believe in facts and figures --

but those facts and figures have no power
to displace a persuasive story.

The only thing that can replace a story

is a story.

You cannot take away someone's story

without giving them a new one.

And it's not just stories in general
that we are attuned to,

but particular narrative structures.

There are a number of basic plots
that we use again and again,

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!

(Laughter)

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,
labor and conservatives,

left and right all became,
broadly, Keynesian.

Then, when Keynesian ran intro 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'll never guess what's coming.

(Laughter)

Disorder afflicts the land!

Caused by the powerful
and nefarious forces

of the over-mighty state,

whose collectivizing tendencies
crush freedom and individiualism

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 labor,

they all became, broadly, neoliberal.

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 of 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.

Over the past few years,

there's been a fascinating
convergence of findings

in several different sciences,