In fairness, the Grender piece is on the surface about Nick Clegg, but it is clear that his policies matter because he (and she) believe in them personally, not because they have any objective value to anyone else. The Barclays letter shows that the new sensibility has penetrated the business world: even bloodless corporations now pretend they have feelings. Notice that although remedial action is promised it is not specified, like a child promising to be good forever. What the letter really says is: "We've been caught. Let us get away with it. What matters is our profit, and that depends on your compliance."

This narcissistic writing embodies two equally dangerous assumptions. The first is that emotion is more important than thought. "Passion" is the pre-eminent virtue, and no context is too banal. "Shop with passion! Shop with a purpose!" urges Amnesty International, in an email flogging T-shirts with human rights slogans. The second is that no subject is more important than the writer. Coren patronises any of his readers who might be interested in politics (notice that this approach rests on a false choice between public engagement and parenting). Nothing is trivial and nothing innately significant, except the feelings of the writer. In this confessional discourse abstract concerns and private sentiment get muddled up, while tone of voice and subject-matter are often mismatched, as in the case of the Rifkind passage on torture above.

English is a supple language; this is one of its great strengths. Words have always changed their shape and meaning, served different parts of speech, come and gone over time. But now, something is happening to words themselves. It's not merely that this or that word is used incorrectly. Words no longer have to mean anything at all.

Consider again the passage above about Nick Clegg from Olly Grender, the Liberal Democrat spin-doctor. Those on the receiving end are not supposed to think but to make a positive emotional connection with Clegg (and Grender). The cognitive communication serious politics once demanded has been replaced by the "affective communication" of marketing. To grasp the scale and speed of the change, let's compare the leadership speeches at past Tory and Labour party conferences to those of today.

Thirty years ago Britain was convulsed by the tragedy of the miners strike. Here is a section from Neil Kinnock's critique of Margaret Thatcher, as delivered at Blackpool in 1984:

In all economic policy, in all social policy, in their very appearance and their conduct of government, this government creates the climate of confrontation, the conditions of conflict: it speaks only the language of conquest. And, in the midst of all that chaos, in the midst of all that assault on the essentials of civilised life in this country and of values in this country, they call for the condemnation of violence. I do not respond to that because it is a taunt, a call to forswear intimidation from a government that bases its whole policy on intimidation.

Here is part of Margaret Thatcher's response to the Labour leader a week later:

It seems there are some who are out to destroy a properly elected Government. They are out to bring down the framework of law. That is what we have seen in this strike. And what is the law they seek to defy? It is the common law created by fearless judges and passed down across the centuries. It is legislation scrutinised and enacted by the Parliament of a free people.