Every now and again a new phenomenon emerges in human communication or social behaviour which everyone recognises but none can name, because there is no term for it. There’s a sense that a word or phrase needs inventing. ‘Virtue signalling’ was one such development, and it came in the pages of The Spectator in 2015 from James Bartholomew. ‘Luxury beliefs’ is another, coined by Rob Henderson in the New York Post in 2019.

I watched Peter Kyle MP being interviewed recently by Wilfred Frost on Sky News about the Online Safety Act, and the name of Nigel Farage came up (quite a lot) because he had announced that he would repeal the act in order to protect freedom of expression. This, according to Kyle, put Farage firmly ‘on the side’ of Jimmy Savile. He was a supporter and facilitator

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