I have never believed that progressive politics has to come from the left. I think the centre-right in politics, if it is optimistic, forward-looking, engaged in the world today, can be an incredible force for progressive politics. The Conservative party is this force for progressive politics. Ask yourself who is making the running on civil liberties and the need to get rid of ID cards; it is us. Ask who is making the running on the environment and the politics of well being; it is us. Who is pushing hardest on flexibility at work? It is the Conservative party.You might think that 'progressive' was the opposite of 'conservative'. Tim's piece blows that theory out of the water. It is absolutely vital for Conservatives to reclaim the language that the left has conquered for itself - social justice probably being the most important aspect. The political issues of the next twenty years are not going to be the same as the last twenty years, and all truly progressive Conservatives know that. We are going to have to talk and think more about issues which might have been off our radar screens in the past. Banging on about Europe, and immigration has not been enough to win the last two elections and it won't do next time. To build the electoral coalition we need, we have to demonstrate that we are serious about other issues too - social justice, civil liberties, inner city education, green issues to name but four. This is not a short term proposition. Cameron has made a great start in his first eighteen months. I rather suspect the next six months will determine whether his progressive agenda will have 'stickability' with the electorate or not.
UPDATE: ConservativeHome has a copy of David Cameron's speech in Tooting tomorrow. It looks a cracker. You can read the whole speech HERE. Here's the excellent conclusion...
We can be clear about the shape of the house we’re building. It’s designed to deliver collective security, as the platform for individual opportunity. Security for our society; opportunity in your life. Not copying New Labour, but learning from its mistakes. Not abandoning Conservative principles, but applying them in new ways to new challenges. And in the process making this Party the true force for progressive politics in Britain today. Our foundations are strong, while Gordon Brown’s are shaky. Our vision is built on the truth that no politician, no bureaucrat, no government official, can ever achieve as much as a strong society working together. Social responsibility, not state control. That’s what we believe, and that’s why we’ll win.
67 comments:
Yes, progressive thinking is needed - and yes, Cameron is doing that. He has liberal and progressive views and that's why I like him.
Now if he can only get the rest of the party to think like him...
They will come to like him as the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. But....
How nice to see the Men of the Parachute Regiment who fought in the Falklands give three cheers for Lady Thatcher and jostle to shake her hand.
Now fast forward to the Iraq Commemorations of the future and see the Men and Women of todays Armed Forces, myself included, as we shake Sir Anthony Blair warmly by the throat. We wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.
Progressive is such a bullshit word.
try saying "regressive" instead. How many politicians would say "we'd like to be regressive" - about 1 per cent.
It all comes down to word-play really. It is typical marketing Spiel .
I bet Coke had exactly the same slogans when they launched their Pepsi-lookalike New Coke back in 1985.
In the wake of its late 1970s "Pepsi Challenge" campaign, in which blind taste tests in public arenas had shown an overwhelming preference for Pepsi, Pepsi began to outsell Coke in supermarkets. Coke maintained its edge only through fountain sales.
While Coca-Cola executives publicly disputed the results of the Pepsi Challenge, their own internal surveys found the same preference among cola drinkers. Other data was worrisome to them, also. In 1972, six times as many drinkers bought Coke exclusively as opposed to Pepsi. A decade later, Coke had only a slight edge, despite much deeper market penetration.
tasters were asked if they would buy and drink it if it were Coca-Cola. Most said yes, they would, although it would take some getting used to. A small minority, about 10-12%, felt angry and alienated at the very thought, saying that they might stop drinking Coke altogether. Their presence in focus groups tended to skew results in a more negative direction as they exerted indirect peer pressure on other participants.[4]
The surveys, which were given more significance by standard marketing procedures of the era, were less negative and were key in convincing management to move forward with a change in the formula for 1985, to coincide with the drink's centennial. But the focus groups had provided a clue as to how the change would play out in a public context, a data point that the company downplayed but which was to prove important later.
Company headquarters in Atlanta started receiving angry letters expressing deep disappointment and anger at executives. Over 400,000 calls and letters were received by the company.[25] A psychiatrist Coke hired to listen in on phone calls to the company hotline, 1-800-GET-COKE, told executives some people sounded as if they were discussing the death of a family member.[26]
Pepsi took advantage of the situation, running ads in which a first-time Pepsi drinker exclaimed "Now I know why Coke did it!"[27] However, Pepsi actually gained very few converts over Coke's switch, despite claiming a 14% sales increase over the same month the previous year, the largest sales growth in the company's history.[19] The most alienated customers simply refused to buy New Coke rather than switch to Pepsi.[28] Coca-Cola's director of corporate communications, Carlton Curtis, realized over time that they were more upset about the withdrawal of the old formula than the taste of the new one.
David Cameron should think carefully about marketing-speak and think about action. People tire of political posturing and windy rhetoric. He starts to sound like Neil Kinnock, only far less eloquent
Anyone can dream up general platitudes attractive to most people. What is the last SPECIFIC policy proposal the Conservatives came up with? Abolishing grammar schools. Not so clever.
Bloody good speech by Cameron. Loved the bit about the EU constitution.
I despair.
Judging by the standard of the "excellent conclusion" (One hundred and fiftyish words to say 'motherhood and apple pie') he hasn't a policy in his pretty little head.
Peter Hitchens is right. The sooner the 'Useless Tories' implode the sooner the Country can have the chance to elect an alternative to NuLab and the Cameroons.
I wonder if an alternative is already mobilising under the banner of the English Democrats.
Oh come on Iain, it's nefarious, meaningless, rehashed tosh.
would you mind quoting on some "news", you are supposed be a a news blog?
Yes indeed, Brown's foundations look dreadfully shaky don't they? Only ten years of economic stability behind him. The advisor to Norman Lamont on black Wednesday is on far firmer ground, what? And I thought the boy Dave wasn't going to go in for mindless spin or numbing platitudes...
Anonymous said "you are supposed to be a new blog". Er, I think I'll be the best judge of what this blog is supposed to be, thanks very much! I think the leade rof the Conservative Party making a major speech counts as news, does it not?
And just for the record, this is not a "news blog". It's a comment blog. In fact, it's an anything i want it to be blog!
Iain, that new icon on your last comment worries me. There is a huge grinning man behind you about to sink his teeth in your shoulder.
Everyone is for progress, almost by definition, the question is what to define as progress. The left has appropriated the word as a form of verbal pre-emption,
That said goven the fate of the Progressive Conservative party, I'm not sure I would favour that exact phrase.
Progressives is a term used in British Municipal Poliics until the early 70s. I can remember campaining for a "Progressive" i.e. Conservative Candiidate for a Glasgow City Council election in 1969.
Indeed describing ourselves as Progressives, we controlled Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen in the late 1960s and if I am right south of the border, the term was also used in Newcastle-on-Tyne and we controlled that.
Trouble was the Labour Party still called us Tory B******.
Good sales pitch from Cameron. Sounding more confident, and starting to attack Gordon Brown on the slimy tactics being adopted by Labour on the EU Constitution. Feels good.
To the anonymous person who posted above Tapestry, if you want to insult me then feel free. But you can put your own name to the insult. Idiot.
Yawn... same old empty meaningless waffle. And he can't even do that without espousing tosh like "social responsibility".
What matters is policy, and on that, he stinks.
Of course, David Cameron is a stand up comedian?
Good stuff Iain. I'm reading the Cameron biography at the moment. It's not uncritical, but what comes across is how tough and resiliant Cameron is. He seems to have unshakable confidence.
BTW, a great article by Simon jenkins in the Sunday Times today, in which he opines the "feral press" didn't hound Blair and his bunch of liars enough.
He ends:
"But we have seen nothing yet. In ten days time, Gordon Brown, that master of obfuscation, comes out to play. What a time that is going to be".
How did he do ConHome from Tuscany?!
He didn't. He has a deputy, Sam Coates.
One of the key reasons why ours has, at least until very lately, remained so free a society is that a succession of rival traditions has eventually come to terms with the other’s permanent existence as an integral part of the national life and character: Catholic and Protestant, Conformist and Nonconformist, Tory and Whig, Conservative and Labour.
But today, the neos (neo-Labour and the neo-Tories, with their neoliberal economics and their correspondingly neoconservative foreign policy) are determined to rout and destroy us paleos. That way lies tyranny.
And those (all of the neos, for a start) who at least broadly subscribe to “the Whig interpretation of history” should consider how often the ideas that prevailed, even within academic, cultural or political institutions defined by those of whom such subscribers approve and who seem most obviously to have won the battles in question, were in fact formulated within the apparently vanquished subcultures: Jacobitism, Legitimism, Carlism, Hapsburg monarchism, Tsarism, Catholic and Protestant resistance to German National Liberalism, those in eighteenth-century England or Germany who turned to Methodism or to Pietism rather than to rationalism, those in France who were Jansenist or Ultramontane, Russian intellectuals who converted to Catholicism or to Protestantism, and so forth.
Someone, somewhere, should be putting together a startling symposium on the profound and long-term influence of all of these, and more. If it hasn’t already been done?
And if we paleos are to be the Jacobites in all of this, then where and what is to be our Diaspora? Far more Jacobites went into exile than, say, Huguenots sought refuge here. They made a very significant economic contribution to France and Spain, they founded the Russian Navy of Peter the Great, they dominated the Swedish East India and Madagascar Companies, and they did very much more besides. Where might our paleo exiles go, what might they (we?) do, and why?
Alternatively, what if we succeed in bringing about the desperately needed Reformation in British politics? Unlike the Reformation itself, it will be bottom-up rather than top-down, it will be directed at collapsed rather than thriving institutions, and it will therefore be massively popular, entirely without any need for imposition by force.
But it will of course leave its recusants, notable for their tiny numbers, for their heavily intermarried families, for the social and cultural insulation provided by their fabulous wealth, for the lavishing of foreign honours on their most outspoken figures, for the fact that all their institutional manifestations are abroad, and yet also for the fact that almost no one abroad (nor even many people here) has any notion that they exist.
All you neos reading this, don’t you want better than that for yourseves, and for your houses and lineages at least for the next three hundred years?
Progressive Conservatives?
Prog-Con?
Has Chad taken over as Daves policy advisor?
UKIP were glad that Chad Noble left and are over the moon he is back with the Cons and advising them on policy!
"Security for our society; opportunity in your life. Not copying New Labour, but ..."
imitating their sentence structure. Why doesn't Cameron show the strength of his foundations by returning to the convention of including at least one finite verb in a sentence?
I, and, I suspect, many others, find this sort of sytax boring and a complete turn-off. When spoken, it makes it very difficult for the listener to pick up the substance of the message - is this the idea, perhaps? - and when written it looks lightweight and vacuous.
I don't know to whom this sort of language is meant to appeal, but such is its association with the politically late Tony Blair that it is fast becoming dated as well as trite.
"Yes indeed, Brown's foundations look dreadfully shaky don't they? Only ten years of economic stability behind him."
Brown has more than doubled personal debt in the UK in the last ten years, gutted productive industries in favor of government jobs and construction, and priced an entire generation out of housing ownership. If that's 'economic stability', I'd hate to see what economic instability is like.
Any idiot can create an artificial boom with low interest rates. The question is what happens when the boom turns to a bust, as it's doing right now.
The next election is down to the Tories to lose, because Brown won't be winning it in the early stages of a serious recession. Unfortunately right now it looks like the Tories do plan to lose.
I think that David Cameron suffers from blurred vision and that he is trying to build his house of cards on sand.
I have trashed him over at my place.
"I'd hate to see what economic instability is like" - I know what economic instability is like Alien Anthropologist - I've lived (and had a mortgage) through the 70s, 80s and 90s! I can remember Anthony Barber, Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont. It's a tough call to decide which of them was the worst though...
It's better to turn back than to keep travelling in the wrong direction.
I agree with wonderforhisage 9.43 re Peter Hitchens.
And now we have two old Etonions trying to hold a policy on Museums.
Whoops this ones fallen apart in less than a day.
Does any policy not fall apart that Cameron touches?
"Conservative Home as a copy of David Cameron's speech...tomorrow".
What, do they have a time machine ?
Why does Cameron bother giving the speech if everyone knows what it is going to be ? Ridiculous spin doctors!
I'm still waiting to hear the following:
- Less government
- Lower taxes
- Fewer politicians
- Less legislation
- More Europe, considerably less EU
It's pretty clear that Cameron and his cohorts don't want my vote. That's OK, I'm not planning to disappoint them.
"Banging on about Europe, and immigration has not been enough to win the last two elections and it won't do next time."
Banging on???
A reminder of that William Hague election campain:
1) We really really don't want to join the euro. Until after the election, and then we'll join anyway.
2) We really really are going to curb immigration. Until someone say they are upset and then we'll forget about it.
3) That's about it.
. He seems to have unshakeable confidence
bit like Blair really.....Narcissism does that....f@cks the rest of us however...but Petulant Prince gets to feel good
Brown's created an instability in Britain not by keeping interest rates down. they are rising. that's because he has permitted inflation to get a grip again.
it took nearly two generations to get post war inflation under control. Brown has thrown the golden moment away by curbing the strength of the private sector by increasing taxes (when the rest of the world is cutting them) and increasing the size of the unproductive state economy.
Every time he increases taxes he finds he has to raise others as he never raises as much money as he hoped to. The reason is that people change their behaviour as taxes alter.
The highest taxed behaviour is work. Brown has increased National Insurance and uncapped it so that the 40% tax band is not 40% but 64%. The so-called 25% band is really 49%.
Capital gains tax has a far higher tax free threshold than income tax/national insurance so that people will try to make capital gains far harder than work for any organisation. Its top rate is 40%.
Frank Field explains how Brown's tax credit system operates to discourage work and also to discourage marriage, and at the same time, to boost the birth rate.
One explanation for these policies and the massive immigration Labour have orchestrated, is to create a new class of state dependent, unmotivated, poorer people who will always vote Labour. Who knows? Maybe that's why they've destroyed basic education as well.
The one thing that is certain is that labour have needlessly reduced Britain's competitiveness and wealth creating capacity....as well as our democratic system.
Under Blair 25% of Brits wanted to leave. Under Brown that number will go up. Cameron is right to work on the fact that people are miserable here, and need more GWB.
hahahahaha
Funniest thing I have read for years.
Isn't "Progressive Conservatism" somewhat oxymoronic?
Blair is laughing in his political grave.
I am sorry, but I read the speech and though it might be rousing if it were delvered well, but found nothing substantial in it whatsoever, nothing firm. Nothing fundamental of note.
Birmingham Conservatives have been calling themselves progressive since at least 2004. It appears to attract voters and as evidenced by this thread (and no doubt by the reactions to it) it irritates the Lefties.
Iain, all very good but will Progressives reduce taxes?
Will they provide universal access to an NHS dentist?
Will they provide good quality education for all?
Will they address the challenges faced by people living ordinary lives beyond the Westminster village or the media bubble?
Will they address the West Lothian question?
It all sounds like sensible stuff to me and a very good basis for the kind of policies that I'd like to see the next Conservative government introduce.
The lasting legacy of Brown's time as Chancellor will not be economic stability, but pensioner poverty for generations. I don't really want the man who stole my pension running my life.
As for Progressive Conservatism being an oxymoron, take a look at Alberta, Canada. The Progressive Conservative party has been in power continuously since 1971. Alberta has the fastest growing economy in Canada. What was the problem again?
When I saw Mrs T on Sunday. Even if you did not like what she stood for. She was honest and you felt safe with her at the helm. When you look at Blair, Cameron and Brown it frightening, They all have no idea about real life, you never know what they stand for. Blair is just a dictator removing our freedoms one by one. Brown has spent all our money and put the country in hock as everyone is about to find out. We then have Cameron who is just a wet weekend, a liberal tory of the worst kind who probably feels guilty about the privileged life he has, and spends his time pretending he has not, and all he wants to be is benevolent to everyone. weak weak weak. I suppose the Consevative party would get rid of him like they did Thatcher unlike labour who have sat on their hands while mad Tony leads us to disaster.
Wow I feel better for that.
Pathetic.
We're supposed to believe that the Cameron who took to the airwaves with the 2005 Tory manifesto he helped write, with a commitment to support Blair on ID cards, is now "making the running" against them?
Absolutely bizarre.
Labour promote compulsory ID cards; Tories flip-flop, their support in the early days helping the plans get this far; whilst only the Lib Dems are 100% consistently backing civil liberties and opposing these appalling ID cards.
that I'd like to see the next Conservative government introduce.
Well Dan you're 27 so you might be able to ask your grandchildren to vote for a Conservative Government.....but I doubt anyone born before 1980 will be alive to see one.
Leopards can change their spots, as I know so well.
Pity, therefore, that you 'progressives' will fail so badly. Crash and burn, they call it.
The 'progressive' Dave Cameron party (formerly known as 'The Government')fails to understand the European Union unlike its predecessors (winners) who actually did.
Dave has a massive achillies heel that is waiting to be arrowed.
A cull needs to take place before the 'progressives' can offer progress in the world of responsibility.
Alberta has the fastest growing economy in Canada.
The Athabasca Oil Sands are the reason.......The province's revenue comes mainly from the taxation of oil, natural gas, beef, softwood lumber, and wheat,
Alberta has a somewhat higher percentage of evangelical Christians than do other provinces.
So Conservatives probably have better prospects where Evangelical Protestants live than otherwise......looks a bit sad for you with current policies then
Anon 9.27 - if you had followed Cameron's policy proposals over recent months you would have seen that he had spoken exactly of those things which you are waiting to hear. Since you are obviously an ignorant person it's just as well you are not a Tory.
We needed a metaphor for what we have been up to. Well, we are building a house. And shifting our ground. Whilst playing a new tune. Just so that you know.
Our metaphor. Your life.
A bit of a mess. Really.
My chums on the What On Earth Are We For Taskforce are doing a great job. As soon as we have any idea at all, we'll get right back to you. In the meantime. We are all Progressive Conservatives now.
What?
Haven't a clue.
Was Chamberlain's policy of appeasement a "progressive policy" from the centre right of politics?
I am progressively going off Chamberlain, I mean Cameroon.
England needs another Hugh Dowding not another Tony Blair.
Trouble is Iain, none of the Tories who matter round my way (make Melanie Phillips seem like Margaret Beckett but not half as pretty) want to have anything to do with this pinko agenda. UKIP and the Bushell Brigade here we come.
Just read the text of the complete speech and there is just nothing concrete or of any genuine substance in it. It is simply a recitation of lefty platitudes most of which have been heard from Cameron before.
This is patently not going to reassure actual conservatives and has nothing much for the supposed target audience of LibDem voters either.
I despair.
Is it just me getting tired of people bringing up the 'Etonian' argument to rebut anything said by Cameron? Accept it?
The poll in today's Times of the attitudes of MPs from the three main parties suggests that not many Tories on the green benches share your ideas, Iain.
Re "Is it just me getting tired of people bringing up the 'Etonian' argument to rebut anything said by Cameron?" Would you prefer we brought
up other aspects of Bullingdon boy's privileged life? Surely Eton is much better shorthand?
Why do I get the sinking feeling that "progressive" means ever more regulation, widely hailed "strategies" that never achieve their objectives and more and more interference by the state.
If "regressive" means half the civil service being told to find more productive lines of work and a significant reduction in the burden the state places on the population then I'm happy to be called regressive.
A Play in God knows how many parts!
Scene 1 Act 1 – somewhere deep in Conservative HQ
Dave – „Well chaps, I’ve had another great idea to get us going again after that grammar school cock-up“
Davis - (under his breath– feeling another headache coming on), “Jesus Christ, not another!”
George – “What is it Dave? I bet it’s absolutely super”
Davis – (reaching for the aspirin) “Give me strength!”
Dave – “Progressive, that’s what we are and that’s what we are going to be”
Francis – “ David, is this really wise…
George – “Oh Francis you old fuddy-duddy, listen to him – it’s inspirational”
Davis – “I think I’m going to be sick”
Dave – “Well that’s settled. We need another new image since the last fiasco”
Davis – “Which one of the fiascoes was that?”
George – “Oh come on DD, it’s so jolly nice here with such good ideas from Dave. Mummy says he’s so clever thinking of a new one almost every week”
Exit Davis barfing
To be continued next week, and the following week, and the......!
Reading the Ian Dale blog daily is a must; always provided one isn’t tempted to delve into “readers’ comments”. The internet has unfortunately delivered the opportunity for most of us to become bar-room bores; we can prattle without the need for any reflective comment. Newspapers do provide a necessary spiking service.
However hiding behind the net’s anonymity (myself included I confess) gives the universe a chance to be waspish, unkind, mendacious and illogical. It appears impossible to have a constructive discussion any more. For example, the conservative party has at no time suggested getting rid of grammar schools: the Willets essay was an attempt to discuss the need to analyse ways of developing the highest common denominator in education as opposed to resorting to the lowest common factor. But the discussion got hi-jacked. The reference at the weekend about museum charging was in the context of proposing that decisions would most times best be made at local level. Certainly worth talking about. Once again the discussion was hi-jacked. And did Cameron specifically mention a “progressive conservative party”? He was talking about progressive thinking.
We don’t appear to want any reflective discussion. Is this perhaps due to the fact that we aren’t producing any political heroes?
It's just words - frankly I'm surprised that you've been taken in by 18 months of twaddle from Cameron. Personally I don't feel I can trust a word the man says - this is what happens when polticians think presentation is everything. Personally I think I'll wait a year and see what happens.
Presumably we can expect even more of this drivel now Coulson is on board.
the conservative party has at no time suggested getting rid of grammar schools: the Willets essay
Willetts stated exactly the arguments used by Fiona Millar and Caroline Benn in their campaigns to have 164 Grammar Schools abolished.
He stirred up the very issue Blair and Adonis had sought to bury.
All the Conservatives have to offer is PFI-Academies in place of Comprehensives at a cost of £45 billion which is sheer lunacy, but those are Blair's plans.
The Conservatives are The Incredible Party......they are frankly unbelievable on a whole raft of issues and seemingly potty on the others. Until Cameron & Co show some inkling of what government is about they will continue to look like work experience kids sent to do the photocopying.........this slagging off Gordon Brown is getting very irritating and juvenile.
Brown may be 56 years old, but he is a Man not a Boy.
The sooner people patiently back David Cameron's centre-right agenda, accept that policy-making is quite rightly a long-drawn out procedure, and put behind them the failed right-wing policies of the last two general elections, the quicker we're going to get rid of Brown's Labour government.
I like the term much more than compassionate conservatives. Although I am a compassionate conservative, it implies that we aren't usually.
Progressive paired with the words about using conservative principles to make a real difference to the problems people face - I like it.
Crumbs! Jolly good play by Vienna there. I must say I am beginning to worry about the Boy Dave. The only two ideas he's had on his own are banning us from flying and ditching grammar schools. Both as popular as Black Wednesday. It's all very well telling us to be patient, but 18 months of not knowing what I stand for is bad for the equilibrium. I just wish that one or two of these taskforces had a gestation period that could compete with that of an elephant.
"Has Chad taken over as Daves policy advisor?"
LoL. I did wonder when the rest of the world was going to catch up with me....
Unfortunately Cameron only seems interested in the soundbite for this week's papers, not the fusion that would indeed deliver lower taxes, smaller state etc.
ID:"It looks a cracker"
What? A party hat, a cheap novelty, a crap motto and the faint smell of burning mingled with the inevitable disappointment of a package that promises more than it can deliver?
The speech has been written with a political speech generator software package. It ticks all the boxes, it sounds like a speech and it is full of very clever collegiate bonhomie.(A great idea that, starkly contrasted with the Dark Brooding Sociopath, soon to be our Prime Minister)
DC is sticking to his guns about not jumping the gun over policies..Cameron says, "Policies without intellectual foundations don't stand the test of time. I agree, but policies without conviction don't either.
The word "strong" pops up a lot but I didn't discern one tiny bit of conviction. I discerned a lot of speech writing.
Churchill or Thatcher it aint.
'Security' of any kind is a childish illusion.
'Collective security' is a Young Socialist illusion.
I'm wondering if Cameron himself exists, or might be yet another illusion.
During the 2005 Election I sent Michael Howard an Email proposing he orientate his campaign around Collective Security - Individual Liberty
At least I now know that someone did read it.
What happened to compassionate?, can't they be compassionate and progressive with a sincere committment to social justice? (not to mention education education education).
"Progressive" in most parts of the Anglosphere is a polite way of saying socialist. (Just look at the so-called progressives in the US.) So now the Tory Party is Progressive Conservative.
Surely they have gone past the centre and headed to the left now?
Or is this just the most inappropriate label one could possibly concieve?
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