You’ll say this is virtue signalling, but it’s time to start acting on our moral proclamations

If Greta Thunberg had taken a Boeing 747 to New York, she would have been a hypocrite; by taking a sailboat, she was virtue signalling

Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addresses climate protesters outside the White House in September (Getty)

Here’s a Christmas game to unite the family – a little conversational bread sauce to lubricate the most desiccated dinner table. What is your the word (or phrase) of the 2010s, and why? No pudding for anyone who mentions the B-word.

But there are so many other tempting candidates, so many new states of mind, so many concepts that didn’t seem real or relevant a decade ago. Selfie? Single-use? Sadfishing? Austerity? #MeToo? Cancelled? Fake news? Clickbait? Face-with-tears-of-joy emoji? Lol? Terf?

But if we confine ourselves to politics – and this was the decade when everything was political – I don’t think you could do better than virtue signalling.