It's long been a mystery to me what that ubiquitous term "progressive" really means. The Left seem to use it as a catch-all term to describe themselves without any actual definition, other than as a tag to identify things they think everyone ought to agree with unquestioningly.
Whether talking about child poverty, political correctness or introducing compulsory registration of innocent people on a state database the protective hand of the big state, "progressive" seems to be synonymous with "cuddly and nice" - for them, at least.
I've wanted for quite a while to do a proper analysis and skewering of the way the Left use the word, so I've started collecting examples of its use. Quite often the policies labelled "progressive" are contradictory, mutually exclusive and utterly flawed, but one example this week took my breath away with what I can only describe as its obscene immorality.
Neal Lawson, the Chair of Compass, wrote an article in the Guardian on Tuesday urging the British Left - and particularly the Labour Party - to rebuild a "progressive movement" in Britain. Lamenting the current state of play he wrote:
Pardon me? So the collapse of socialism in the "east" was a bad thing for so-called progressives?
Precisely which aspects of the Soviet Union do British progressives identify with? The murderous police state? The mass famines? The crushing, grinding poverty? The racism or the homophobia? The censorship? The state-sponsored theft? The privileged, hypocritical elite robbing ordinary people to furnish their own lives of luxury? The genocides and deportations? Or maybe just the rubbish cars?
It's remarkable that a group as prominent as Compass, who are hosting the next Labour Leadership hustings tomorrow, are openly misty-eyed about the Soviet Union. Parts of the left have historically been admirers and apologists for communism in the face of all its wickedness, but in recent times they had become more marginalised. It is disturbing to see that such an influential group are apparently treading that same, sickening road.
Having praised the original Evil Empire, Lawson then goes on to try to identify the "progressive" Left with the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars by titling their conference this weekend "A New Hope". To continue the theme, I trust their strapline will be "These are not the policies you're looking for".
