Progress

Tom Griffin (London, OK): We are all progressives now, suggests Steve Richards today in an Independent column which interrogates the meaning of this increasingly popular political label:

There is no escape from it. Gordon Brown seeks to form a progressive consensus. David Cameron claims the Conservatives are the progressive party. Nick Clegg is a progressive. David Miliband is one too. So is Ken Livingstone. Tony Blair is a progressive. So is Ed Balls. George Osborne is also one. I could go on. Apparently we are all progressives now.

Lacking clear definition the word is easily applied without too many questions asked. For the Conservatives it serves to decontaminate a brand previously seen as nasty and extreme. Labour leaders have used the term to purge echoes of their party's past.

Tony Curzon Price (London, oD at the Progressive Governance Summit):

Then listen to the strategy taking shape here at the Progressive Governance Summit.

The world economy needs:

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Fifteen progressive heads of state have touched down in the UK to summit about the way forward. The Foreign Secretary has greeted the occasion in The Times with a concise 1,000 word summary of how progressives need to fuse the traditions of social democracy and radical liberalism into a "single narrative". He concludes with a Delphic warning that encompasses progressive conservatives as well

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Well done Paul Linford over at the Liberal Conspiracy. He picked up immediately that David Cameron's  flirting glance at the Lib-Dems by offering them a progressive alliance was also an attempt to hijack the "P" word, Is Progressive a word worth fighting for? Now Polly T has followed him without reading him. It seems there is a  slick Tory  repositioning underway backed up by a pamphlet! More on this to come, I guess. But I suspect that playing with party alliances like any old tart under the mistletoe is not the best way of building a political strategy. At least, I hope not.