Well isn't this ironic. Just when conservatives had been tip-toeing away from liberalism, the great liberal reformers – the hero and heroine of supply-side economics, Reagan and Thatcher – are back in vogue on the right. Over the past several years, traditionalist conservatives have been attempting to extricate conservatism from its intertwinement with liberalism. Where to now?

To understand the schism and examine how it might play out, it is first necessary to remind ourselves of the meanings and origins of the words that politics weaponises.