Prodicus: They still don't get it. Maybe they never will.

Thus James Purnell:

The coalition will want to say that this new politics shows that it is a progressive Government. [...]
What does “progressive” mean?

It means whatever the speaker says it means. To a Socialist, it means socialism and everything its equality-obsessed totalitarian world-view brings with it. It means taking power and then meddling in everything because only your divine insight can improve people's lives and anyone who disputes that is actually evil and must be fought by all possible means. Killed, preferably. No wonder Labour couldn't make a coalition.

To a Conservative, 'progressive' means helping people to make progress - towards something better, without destroying the good they and others have already achieved. It means building on what is, rather than tearing it all down in the name of a Brave New World of your own making. It means going with the grain of human nature, not fantasising that Men can be transformed into Supermen. It means learning from experience rather than from a textbook.

And does Britain want to be a progressive country?

In the Conservative definition, of course. What's not to want? In the Labour definition, no.

The Government [...] will say that it is progressive because it is doing things that are not traditionally right-wing: caring about civil liberties, the free schools policy, greenery.

Not traditionally right-wing? Only to a Left-winger whose allies claim all the virtues and - insultingly - attribute none to those who refute their dogma. Not traditionally right-wing to defend the liberty of the individual from over-mighty governments? Have you read The Gulag Archipelago? Name of Edmund Burke ring a bell? Thomas Jefferson?

But its policies will not transform society. Mr Clegg revealed this subconsciously when he said last week that “education is everything in the creation of a truly mobile society”.

Yes, let us reflect on the function of education in the process of liberating a society, and more importantly the individuals who comprise that society, so that they may make progress towards a better life.

The educational methods which Labour governments have advocated since Anthony Crosland, their sell-out of education to the raw power of the teacher unions, and the Gramscian philosophy underlying so much of Labour's Fabian mendacity over many generations, have resulted in a semi-literate Labour-voting or non-voting but politically-passive underclass. This is wholly to the political advantage of the Labour Party who thereby harvest what amounts to an automatic vote in the UK regions with the lowest education attainment, from people wholly dependent on the state for their livelihood because they are prevented, by Labour's 'education' system, from earning their living in the wealth-producing world.

And Labour tells them this is all right, that there is no need to work or to worry, that Labour will take care of all their needs and that any who say this is not good are wicked, their enemies, and that Labour will fight these wicked enemies on their behalf. Vote Labour.

Irony of ironies: V I Lenin's motto was 'education, education, education'. The difference between Lenin and our late Labour Party masters was that Lenin meant it. Lenin was no Fabian. He was more honest than that.

That “everything” underlines the Government’s progressive shortfall: it underestimates the conditions that need to be met to make people powerful.

Excuse me while I choke back this bitter laughter, Mr Purnell. Remind me precisely how, after thirteen years of Labour in office, with (just for starters)

your multifarious insecure databases threatening my identity
your ubiquitous CCTV watching my every move
your 4,000 new criminal offences
your ID cards
your fingerprinting of my children against my will
your detention without trial for longer and longer periods
your criminal record checks on people taking care of friends' children
your making my children go to a school in which you make the the staff accept violent disruptive children in class so that my children are not educated but bullied
your suppression of my right to speak freely, to smoke, to drink alcohol
your forbidding me to take photographs in my street
your rebukes about my eating and exercise habits
your legislation against my (and incidentally the nation's established) religion in favour of the religion of hostile refusenik foreigners, right down to your prohibitions on my wearing a cross in the office
your new army of jobsworths who may enter my home against my will
your laying out the welcome mat for nobody-knows-how-many millions of immigrants who have changed the face of my country for ever and openly state their intent first to challenge, then to break and finally to abolish its laws and customs
your signing away our nation's sovereignty against the known majority will of your countrymen
your hospitality to foreign murderers in the name of their (but not my) 'human rights'
your record numbers of adults and young people who have never worked and are never likely to
your ossification of social mobility (sacrificing educational excellence on the altar of your Equality Gods) so that poor, uneducated children are more likely than ever to remain poor and uneducated
your abdication of control of our banks and consequently the increased likelihood of my losing my savings
my reduced pension thanks to your increasing (against Treasury advice) taxes on pension funds
your historically colossal debts around my neck and those of my children and grandchildren