Tag Archives: progressive

Age does not give a blue political rinse

By Andy Boddington | Sun 12th February 2023 - 12:33 pm

There is a long standing aphorism that people become more conservative with age. A well known example that comes to is Winston Churchill. However, the evidence for age giving a blue rinse to voter’s politics has been uneven. New surveys and analyses suggest that while many people may previously have swung to the right in later life, that is possibly no longer the case. People are remaining liberal thinking longer and later in life. This gives hope for progressive parties as the “Thatcher’s children” generation ages and a more liberal cohort advances in age and remains liberal thinking.

This has implications for all parties. The Conservatives have recently swung to the right, playing to the older generation. Leading Tory politicians seem to believe that voters are made in their own image. That folly means they are losing the younger voter.

There is now a challenge for progressive parties, which need to ensure that they retain liberal thinkers into old age. There are signs that is happening.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 14 Comments
Richard Morris

Opinion: there are better adjectives for the Labour Party than ‘progressive’

By Richard Morris | Mon 7th February 2011 - 3:44 pm

I keep banging on about the fact that there’s a fairly obvious programme in place by the Labour Party to steal our natural positions, both philosophically and in policy (see my article on LDV or my recent blog post). Their latest moves to ‘own’ the term progressive are another case in point.

However, as a branding expert (and a Lib Dem) I do find the news that Ed Miliband is considering rebranding the party he leads as ‘The Progressive Labour Party’ pretty funny – and wrongheaded.

There are essentially three reasons why an organisation rebrands:

  1. Costs savings through economies of scale

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 59 Comments
Tom Paul

Opinion: Liberal Democrats should stop using the word ‘progressive’

By Tom Paul | Wed 12th January 2011 - 2:18 pm

The decline of Labour as a coherent intellectual force is one of the defining features of recent British politics. No doubt the next few years will see a healthy process within Labour to seek to heal the wounds and to re-focus. I suggest that under the banner of ‘progressivism’ this process has started.

2010 saw commentators for the first time in the UK judging political propositions on the basis of whether they are ‘progressive’ or not. Ed Miliband’s own analysis is that in government Labour “…lost that sense of progressive mission.” But what on earth does progressive mean? What kind of …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 31 Comments
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