Not so long ago, if you said there was a shadowy cabal of elites who were involved in the sex trafficking of young women and girls and that some of the most famous people in the world were allegedly involved, then you would have been dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.

On a certain level, it feels psychologically safe to “other” people who have conspiracy theories – Jon Ronson even wrote a book called Them about extremists and conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracies were for people who needed a coherent story in order to make sense of all the bad things in the world. They were for people who could not handle chaos and desired a neat narrative, the way children like a bedtime story.

Having worked in the media and politics – two areas often accused of being in on the conspiracy – what I saw instead were people just trying to get through each day and get the basics of their job done, rather than being players in some shadowy network that operated according to hidden rules. People who worked in newsrooms were too disorganised to be part of a global plot! They were too busy trying to........

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