Confected

But don’t let the juicy confected fruit fool you: this is a dry red wine.

Despite the strange name bestowed on their son Harry and Meghan have consistently spoken of the impenetrable pact between the House of Windsor and Fleet Street, which works through the dark arts of royal leaks, choreographed access and confected stories.

But she said that 'if a Conservative politician had said it about a Labour politician of colour, I think we'd have had no end of the confected outrage'.

Legendary “missile gaps” were confected to frighten lawmakers.

But the row was to a large extent confected by the media, because few people were calling for the songs to be dropped, and the BBC said its original decision to drop the singing (but not the tunes) was for Covid-related reasons.

For the prime minister - as he said that evening - "no confected outrage or synthetic indignation" from his opponents would deter him in his central mission of getting Brexit done.

Jacqueline Maley has drawn our attention to the relatively confected response by the PM to the Cartier watch affair (‘‘The relative value of outrage, 25/10).

One reaction was confected outrage by our PM.

In fact, even if a priest or bishop repented and returned to the Catholic fold, the Eucharist he confected was still considered invalid.

The backdrop has changed from a TV studio to the Oval Office but the formula remains the same: confected distractions about who’s up and who’s down, with Trump at centre stage at all times and at all costs.