Party conference season and the air is thick with oxymoron. As the politicians scramble for attention, the English language is bent beyond all meaning.

David Cameron, the Conservative party leader, started it with a claim to have founded a new “progressive conservatism”. Late to own up to the grim state of the public finances, Labour ministers are now promising only “caring cuts”. Not to be outdone, the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg has come up with something called – I kid you not – “progressive austerity”. Tony Blair’s much maligned “Third Way” no longer sounds quite so crass a construction.