Two parties could bear the name Progressive
the man who hates "progressives" in London always calls himself a "progressive" in South Africa
The joke turns on party names rather than on a traveller changing his convictions. London's Progressive Party belonged to an alliance of Liberals, labour interests and Fabians; the Conservative-aligned Municipal Reformers displaced it on the London County Council in 1907. The London Archives' collection description, ACC/1632, establishes those affiliations. A surviving 1907 anti-Progressive cartoon makes the opposition tangible: an umbrella labelled Progressive policy turns inside out to reveal Socialism while its ratepayer falls toward insolvency.
In South Africa the name could instead signal the British imperial interest. At the Cape Town Progressive Association in January 1903, Rudyard Kipling urged political organization, English settlement and material development, culminating in a federation of South Africa. The speech, reproduced by the Kipling Society from the Cape Times, 27 January 1903, supplies a contemporary witness. The society's editorial introduction identifies Jameson's party as the beneficiary. The Transvaal also had Progressives: in the Commons debate of 31 July 1906, Sir Charles Dilke objected to their appropriation of the name and characterized them as Rand gold magnates seeking British ascendancy. That is Dilke's hostile characterization, not a neutral description of every member.
Thus a British opponent of London's municipal Left could favour South African Progressives without reversing his politics. Chesterton supplies no individual and says only South Africa, so identifying one particular Cape or Transvaal politician as his target would go beyond the evidence. The exaggerated 'always' makes a recognisable partisan joke serve the paragraph's larger warning: a shared commendatory label does not establish a shared programme.
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