In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary chose ‘post-truth' as its word of the year, defining it as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief'.

Recent books by Evan Davis, Matthew D'Ancona and James Ball have all explored this concept further. Essentially the argument is, propaganda, spin and downright mendacity have always been part of political discourse. But in the past these phenomena existed in a certain relationship to truth. We worried about whether political statements were true or not. Now we do not care.