Contributor(s): Maurice Fraser, Polly Toynbee | ‘Progressive’ is a slippery term. Right (i.e. Left) - thinking people use it with casual abandon, to confer moral approval on a set of values which they regard as uncontroversial. But on close examination the meaning of the term appears contingent, historically-specific and eminently contestable. Who is to say what is ‘progressive’? Is it time to rescue it from political correctness? And can the Right lay at least as compelling a claim to it as the Left? Maurice Fraser is senior fellow in European politics in the European Institute at LSE. Polly Toynbee is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian since 1998.