Britain’s soi-disant progressive alliance – Old Labour, trade union obfuscation, radical feminism, political correctness, Arabism, and obsessive State control – suddenly finds itself in a historically inverted role: once the attack force for scaling the walls of reaction, in 2010 it finds its own self-made Establishment under fire from a number of directions.

Traditionally, this counter-revolution would be coming from Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Conservative Party. But the Tories are trapped in a Coalition, and so the real assault is being undertaken by the People. This amorphous group comprises a Middle England no longer willing to deny the evidence of its own eyes. It comes from former Tory eurosceptics fed up of being described as mad by the media. And from libertarians able to discern the Big State’s even Bigger EU Brother about put his jackboot on their necks.

But above all, ordinary grounded Brits can see economic mayhem and fiscal bankruptcy coming.
And in that context, it is the ‘progressive alliance’ which aims to persuade floating voters that none of this would be happening were it not for the Wicked Etonian Cuts first plotted on the privileged playing fields of, er, privilege.

That word ‘progressive’ tries to suggest (most of the time these days) new, better, modern and forward-looking.

But it can be applied equally to life-threatening or chronic illness: as in, something getting progressively worse.

Britain’s progressive malady is the desire of feather-bedded public sector and Whitehall apparatchiks to remain in a position to earn funny-money – and thus qualify for illegally awarded gold-plated pensions.

What exactly are the ‘progressive’ things that these people are forcing upon us?

Progressively third-rate and cynical State health care. Progressively knackered private and State pensions. Progressively undignified care of the aged who gave so much to ensure our freedoms seventy years ago. Progressively illiberal intrusions upon our privacy in order to fight internet crime going undetected by an underfunded and distracted police force. Progressively higher taxes from an increasingly controlling EU that wants ordinary citizens to pay for its own insane largesse and corruption. And progressively forced, quota definitions of ‘equality’ that merely render the poor even more hopelessly unequal than they were before.

Most well-meaning citizens would instinctively vote for something progressive. The word holds within it the promise of a better tomorrow. But in 2010, it means something entirely different. It means the making of painfully slow progress – via the battering-ram of bigotry, polemic and bad science – towards Loonyland via Disneyworld.