I was glad to see the new leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, get to grips with language issues early doors. Language matters, and while I doubt the leader’s office was waiting to take advantage of him by springing over-familiar salutations towards MPs, correct usage is not inconsequential.

Perhaps I might guide him to a couple of other areas worth his and others’ scrutiny. No 10 has decreed that the Irish backstop must now be accompanied by the epithet “antidemocratic”, despite this not having been a term used since the idea was first floated by the UK government as part of its efforts to secure a deal to fulfil the referendum result.

I suspect I’m not the only one puzzled by this. Whether the backstop is liked or not, whether or not you think it works, anti-democratic seems a strange term for Her Majesty’s government to use, as the proposal was part of an agreement of 28 sovereign governments including the UK. The current prime minister himself voted for it earlier this year, as did a number of cabinet ministers, who seem not to have objected to the affront to democracy it now implies. But, hey ho, this is now what government supporters must deem it to be.

Manipulative though this is, it is not as dangerous as the suggestion, again from No 10 last week, that it was preparing for an election theme of “people against politicians”. At a time when MPs are under more physical threat and abuse than ever before, and at a time when the polarisation of politics worldwide is sparking a dangerous revision of democracy, the subtlety of division here should not be missed.

MPs think we are already representatives of the people, as duly elected parliamentarians. We can be bloody minded, both in defence of government policies that the people may find uncomfortable – such as financial prudence – or in calling it to account, on behalf of the people. But this is not an existential contest between us. This is our legitimacy. Some were accorded the term “staunch” parliamentarians by resisting efforts to pass the withdrawal agreement into law since November 2018 – which others might argue actually thwarted the wish of many of the people to leave the EU on mutual terms. Some of those very parliamentarians, who brought down a government, are now ministers of the highest rank.

But those of us who interpret our democratic duties differently, contrary to the wishes of some in Downing St, are apparently to be relegated to “politicians”, directly opposing “the people”, no longer interpreters as before, as our views no longer fit, and we are thus to be fingered. This follows a long established divisive US trend, to label Washington as the enemy, and seek to elect “outsiders” to challenge; some good, others less so. This is going well in the US, of course.

If a wedge can be driven between public and parliament – not defined by policy difference, but by identity – then the arguments of the “politician” are necessarily and deliberately devalued. The contrary policy, such as “no deal”, now being presented as that of the people, which it never was, must therefore be the legitimate one.

However, at a cost. Bar the Liberal Democrats, established political parties are weaker than ever as moderates leave – ripe for takeover by single-issue campaigns, aided by aggressive and dark social media, skilfully orchestrated. Those who seek to drive this wedge between people and parliament for their obsession of today may find they are at the top of a future slippery slope on incendiary issues such as immigration, human rights, or wealth.

I’m not sure which worries me more – whether they know, or don’t know, what they are doing.

Alistair Burt is the Conservative MP for North East Bedfordshire