The "Progressive" Tories

In a frankly nauseating video, the Tories argue that their leaders have been forces for progressive change throughout the years. If you particularly want to see some gushing praise for the video, then follow the link and take a look at the post up at Dale's place. If you can watch this video to its end and not get a lump in your throat, you are a better man than I. It comes down to just how much nonsense you can tolerate as to whether that lump will be caused by being moved, or through regurgitation of your dinner.

By its very nature, Progressive politics is not the natural home for the British Conservative Party. In fact, Wikipedia accurately states that "Progressivism is often viewed in opposition to conservative ideologies." The Conservative Party isn't progressive, and never has been. In fact, the video proves that. They struggle to fill a video of just eight minutes of very slow moving script with the progressive achievements of the Tories. The Tories haven't been progressive in over a century. In this country, the progressive party was first the Liberals, and then Labour. And the Tories have stood against those parties consistently.

A failure to be progressive actually is nothing to be ashamed of. Despite the noble aspirations of the progressive section of British politics, the reality of their policies has been the creation of a statist stranglehold of the government within this country. The Tories shouldn't be apologising for not being progressives; it is a little like Christians apologising for believing in Christ. If the Tories need to apologise for anything, then it should be their failure to oppose progressive politics as much as they could have done. And right now, they should be putting in place a radical manifesto to reverse many of the statist policies of the progressive parties, rather than desperately trying to rewrite history to make themselves into the progressives.

Instead, they are dealing in meaningless posturing. They are trying to project a largely false image as a centrist or left of centre party. Unfortunately, history is always going to throw up the inconvenient political truth that the Tories, by nature, are a conservative party rather than a progressive one. So the question has to be why on earth are they bothering with this lie?

There are two possible reasons. Firstly, the Tories are still scared about coming across as... well, Tories. They think that if they drop the Cameron *progressive* facade for one second, then people will grow to hate them again. They are terrified of being the Tory party, and as a result terrified of being the political movement that won landslide elections in 1983 and 1987, as well as winning a record breaking number of votes in the General Election of 1992. They are terrified of actually being the Tories at a time when the public seems to want the Tories back in power.

The alternative is that Labour have actually succeeded. They've won the ideological battle and made the Tories into a sub-Nu Labour party. Cameron is a new type of Conservative, but unfortunately an old type of politician. The middle of the road, *progressive* type. It would be particularly depressing if this was actually the case, since the Labour party has finally utterly alienated the British population and are, for the first time since 1992, ready to listen to the Conservatives again.

Either way, it doesn't bode that well for our next government, does it? This desperate bid for the mantle of being progressive either shows the Tory party to be terribly scared of Nu Labour, or actually trying to recreate themselves in the image of Labour. Neither option indicates a party in great shape, and neither option shows a future government able to implement the changes we so desperately need.