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The word progressive has been doing so much rhetorical work lately that it’s worth asking what it means. Like many, I feel fond of the term, and have come to identify with it, but recently I noticed that being progressive gives me no felt sense of coherence, motivation or belonging, and this realisation bothered me. When the concepts you reach for to make sense of your life start to feel meaningless, it is time to re-examine them.
Nicola Sturgeon marshals ‘progressive’ with singular conviction, and says it with hard earned authority. Her popularity in the run up to the election meant that her interviews sometimes sounded like public rituals of reciprocal definition: who is Nicola? A progressive. What is a progressive? Nicola. Nationalist you say? Not so much. Progressive. Define or be defined.
