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Over the last few years, a new fear has been forming in the already anxious minds of liberal and leftwing Britons. The fear is that the right, made more aggressive by an injection of populism, is no longer satisfied by dominating national politics and defining the shape of the economy. It wants to dominate British culture as well.

Starting with the Brexit campaign, the right has launched a series of culture wars: against remainers, the BBC, the universities, the legal system, the big cities and seemingly anywhere that liberal or leftwing thinking still lingers strongly, despite a decade of Tory rule. These culture wars have mobilised and united conservative Britons, ensured that debates about patriotism and social cohesion are conducted on rightwing terms and helped the Tories win a big parliamentary majority.

The latest culture war is the war on woke being waged by the Tory press, and increasingly by the government as well. This campaign caricatures as dangerous extremists those who believe that Britains power structures, social relations and national identity should fairly reflect the countrys diversity. Conservative commentators describe wokeness as a cult, an epidemic, anti-western, totalitarian, and even as cultural Marxism an interpretation that began as a far-right conspiracy theory.

In his unusually brief party conference speech this week, Boris Johnson still found room for an anti-woke passage, inaccurately associating Labour with those who want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country to make it look more politically correct. Over the summer, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, warned a London museum that it might lose its state funding if it removed a statue of the slave trader Robert Geffrye from its grounds. Last month, the Department for Education instructed schools not to teach pupils about extreme political stances such as the desire to overthrow capitalism, or to teach victim narratives that are harmful to British society.

Such episodes reveal a government that regards culture wars as more than a way of gaining electoral advantage. As the Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley recently explained, Boris and Cummings understand that you cant change Britain unless you march through the [cultural] institutions that you cant simply cede culture to the left.

To the rightwing culture warriors, subversive ideas have been allowed to spread through British society largely unchecked for far too long, regardless of who has been in government. But now the Conservatives have realised, as Stanley put it, that when youre in power and you control the purse strings of some cultural institutions, you do have a say to change their political balance. The idea that the dedicated enemies of liberalism Charles Moore and Paul Dacre should respectively chair the BBC and head the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, both supposed to be politically neutral roles, should be seen in this context. That Moore has now withdrawn his interest does not rule out further rightwing candidates.

This new Tory assertiveness owes much to populism. In 2018 the political theorist Nadia Urbinati wrote: Populism in power is an extreme majoritarianism. Populist governments act as if [they] were the expression of the one right and true majority, and consider any opposition morally illegitimate because it is not made of the right people. Such an intolerance of dissent has been one of the Johnson governments few consistent qualities. Its this seemingly insatiable need to identify and defeat enemies that many non-Tories and some Tories find most frightening about Cummings.

Yet launching constant culture wars is a sign of Tory weakness as well as strength. Even over Brexit, the partys attacks on a liberal elite have been an admission that it can no longer rely on economic arguments. And since the Johnson government has begun to struggle, its striking that its talk of a war on woke has increased.

How effective will this war ultimately be? In the short term, its given the right a cause to rally around during a difficult year. But over the long term, the evidence that culture wars work for the right in Britain is much more mixed.

Like now, the early 1980s saw an upsurge of British activism for racial, sexual and gender equality. Parts of the left became involved, in particular the powerful Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone, which gave grants to the activists and also diversified its own workforce and practices. The rightwing press and Margaret Thatchers government were appalled by what they saw correctly as a major threat to the status quo. But they also saw a political opportunity. Branding all practitioners of the new identity politics the loony left, they created a bogeyman that helped the Conservatives win elections for a decade.

But the effects of this culture war gradually wore off. When Thatchers successor, John Major, tried to restart it in 1993 with a speech arguing that social values should go back to basics, his provocation backfired, partly because of a succession of personal scandals involving Tory ministers, but also because public attitudes were changing. The Labour government that replaced Majors repealed clause 28, a homophobic Conservative law passed in 1988, and introduced liberal social reforms such as civil partnerships. There was no significant backlash from voters.

Nowadays, political stances widely considered loony in the 80s, such as celebrating multiculturalism, are commonplace even in the Tory party. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, describes himself as a proud Hindu. As prime minister, Johnson promotes Black History Month.

Such inclusivity sits very uneasily alongside the war on woke. But its possible that the government will manage to sustain both. Johnson has spent his political career sounding both liberal and reactionary, sometimes in the same sentence, and generally getting away with it. Populists, and the people who vote for them, are rarely bothered about ideological consistency.

Yet the fact that todays Tory culture war (like the Tories) is most strongly supported by older Britons suggests its limits as a political strategy. Back in the 80s, Livingstone predicted that Thatchers social conservatism would ultimately fail because she was trying to restore the more monocultural, conformist country shed grown up in, a country that no longer existed. She abolished the GLC, but he was right.

Some of todays culture warriors act as if wokeness can and should be abolished. At the Tory conference this week, at events about the threat of wokeness, some of the participants spoke with such urgency it was hard to make out all their arguments, but you could hear their desperation their wish that social diversity would simply go away.

But other rightwing commentators accept that some form of wokeness is here to stay. They write about it being kept at bay. Its a reminder to fearful leftists and liberals that the right isnt always as confident and all-conquering as it seems. This may be little consolation to its victims, but for the Tories cultural counter-revolution, the clock is ticking.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The Tories culture war is a reminder that the right isn't as fearless as it seems - The Guardian