’Tis the season to be jolly. However, tra la la la la seems to be in rather short supply this year. Perhaps it’s the spectre of debt; perhaps it is the vision of this government’s terrifying incompetence, or its haunting indifference to freedom, or its constant apparitions in hearth and home. In any case, we all need as much seasonal cheer as possible so I suggest a new Christmas word game. It’s called Political Lexicon.

Almost anyone can play. The only exception is people who are quite content with what our political masters say and how they say it. People like that wouldn’t understand the game anyway. All you need is two or more people who feel a little angry about the state of the nation. You can play it competitively or cooperatively, or you can use it as a spur to festive conversation. The idea is to come up with as many examples as possible, preferably new, of government Newspeak.

One good example I noticed recently is the word “migrant”. It’s a perfectly good word, meaning a person who moves from place to place. But migrant is now regularly used by ministers, pressure groups and finally the media to mean “immigrant”. Immigrant seems to be becoming an unword.

The reason is obvious: immigrant is alarming, not least because of the government’s hopeless policies and hopeless failures in dealing with immigration. But migrant is not loaded with all that anxiety and controversy – migrants might after all be adorable Polish builders who will one day go away – so that word is used instead; it is language used to soothe and confuse all at once, subordination by obfuscation.

Score several points, then, for migrant in the Political Lexicon game. It is a classic example of what George Orwell was talking about in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language: “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Something else you will find helpful in playing the game is the Centre for Policy Studies’ 2008 Lexicon, a guide to contemporary Newspeak. I feel slightly proprietorial about this. The Centre for Policy Studies is a think tank and, at a lunch there recently, I suggested they might consider publishing a Political Lexicon. They have rapidly done so, inviting contributions from various writers, including a few from me. This useful document will appear next week.

As its introduction says, politicians have always manipulated language to their own ends. “Friendly fire” and “antipersonnel device” spring to mind. What does seem to be new is the extremes to which new Labour has taken the abuse of language. Words are increasingly used to mean something very different or even their opposite.

What happened to the word “institutional”, as in “institutional racism” in the Macpherson report, is alarming. Institutional means something that is part of an institution, as Christianity is institutionalised in the Church of England. Now it means something vague and subjective that is genuinely hard to define, but is a useful term of condemnation.

In rather the same way “mental health” these days actually means “mental illness”. A distinguished public figure wrote a letter to The Times mentioning the stigma of a “mental health diagnosis”.

That is partly the euphemistic temper of the times. Labour can hardly be blamed for inventing political correctness, much though it has profited from it. But under this government, Newspeak has become more pervasive and much more powerful.

Plain speaking is on the defensive. There was a public gasp of astonishment last week when Nick Clegg, the new Liberal Democrat leader, answered a question briefly and truthfully, saying he did not believe in God. We are not used to such direct honesty and almost feel the man must be a bit of a fool to make himself so plain.

Here are some of my favourite examples of Newspeak from the Centre for Policy Studies 2008 Lexicon. Children in the care of the state are now officially called “looked-after children”. In fact, looked-after children means children who are not looked after, owing to the incompetence of the relevant authorities, and who are far more likely than other children to be lost, prostitute, illiterate, unemployed or in jail.

“Address”, as in address the real issue, means avoid the real issue. “Celebrate”, as in celebrate achievements, means to use taxpayers’ money to promote the government. For example, David Miliband said, when offering large awards to schools: “There is much to celebrate about our schools – improving results, good teaching and committed staff . . . It is right to reward the staff whose work helps pupils to learn and these awards celebrate their achievements.” To use our money to promote an illusion of success is the kind of effrontery we now barely notice.

“Celebrate”, as in celebrate diversity, means compulsory approbation. If you feel doubtful about diversity in any approved forms you are an unperson.

“Conversation”, as in a politician’s call for a public conversation, means nothing of the sort. They are merely words to suggest heartwarmingly inclusive action and wastefully expensive flurries of activity, to conceal the fact a politician has no policy, nor any idea at all of what to do. In the same way, “public inquiry” now means pretty much the opposite – an investigation that will neither be entirely public nor very inquiring, set up to protect the government’s reputation.

“Quality” in state services such as childcare means of poor or doubtful quality. “Closure” and “drawing a line under” mean evading any responsibility for something. “Social”, as in social investment, social capital and so on, means almost nothing at all.

One could go on and, in the Political Lexicon game, one should. We need to watch our masters and their absurdities, for they are far from harmless. These weasel words bamboozle most of the people most of the time. As Orwell said: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

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