In and of itself, there is no virtue in working, much less working hard. Tory ministers appear to disagree. The Conservative party conference was plastered with the phrase "hardworking" – "For Hardworking People", the legend boasted from the platform – and a host of frontbench speakers milked the term for every last residue of rhetorical worth. This began a few months ago when George Osborne started his – God help us – #hardworkingpeople tweets. And it's all been downhill from there.

Of course, "hardworking" – whether it is a predicate of "families" or "people" – is one of those glittering generalities that features regularly in political communications. And perhaps it doesn't do to read too much into a public relations strategy but, if Valentin Voloshinov was correct that the word is the most sensitive index of social change, the sudden overkill of this sememe might suggest something significant is afoot.

The reason the term is reached for by politicians is that it has so many layers of meaning. In one sense, it evokes the "dignity of labour", a thematic that owes itself as much to craft unionism and the productivist ideology of a historical layer of skilled workers as it does to the so-called "Protestant work ethic". This remains resonant in parts of British culture, despite the fact that most labour is hardly dignified or dignifying. Osborne's decision to visit factories and skilled manual workers in particular suggests he was aiming to evoke this sense.

But "hardworking" also connotes something else: the virtue of the dedicated employee, who is ever available, an asset to company and country, never shirking, never clock-watching. This is linked to the neoliberal conception of the entrepreneurial self, the effortlessly protean, constantly busy wheeler and dealer with many projects on the go – for example, the super-mum with career, family, investments, charity events, and socials, all on the go. This self never stops working; even leisure is work, an opportunity for networking, utility maximising, and smiley pictures for Facebook and other online CVs.

In another sense, the term is linked to respectability. It is not the dignity of craft that matters so much as the status earned by being in work – thereby joining the morally exalted "salt of the earth". To not be in work, we have seen, is to be a "skiver": a burden on society, and morally dubious. The Tories are for "our people", the "strivers". This is a strongly resonant notion: the idea that work and social desert are inextricably bound. But it is also, in this articulation, a very Thatcherite thematic, far from the one-nation ideology that Cameron espoused in opposition. It deliberately draws a line of antagonism right across the working class, and thus right through Labour's base. The Tories are fortunate enough in that Labour has helped them to do this.

Finally, all this tends to be linked to an old notion of second world war pluck. Given the perceived necessity for tightening our belts and knuckling down and applying the old elbow grease in order to dig Blighty out of its current malaise, it is the hardworking people who must be cherished and condescended to. Where would we be without all the hardworking boiler-makers and ditch-diggers? Give them a tiny tax cut to show our appreciation.

Notably, the term "hardworking", and the status and patronising genuflection that goes with it, is something that is handed down from above in most of these senses. It is like being given a prefect's badge. You might believe yourself to be "hardworking", but to really know for sure you'd have to be told it by a rich person.

So, what social change might be referred to here? First of all, there is the policy. Osborne promises, quite disingenuously, to take the UK budget into a surplus for the first time since the war. This is disingenuous because there are too many variables – growth being the most obvious one – to be sure that one can achieve a budget surplus. It is also disingenuous because, once again, it is based on the pretence that a state budget is a like a household budget. But this phoney goal provides the pretext and justification for a sustained assault on welfare lasting at least until 2020. The "skivers" will really be made to suffer for their sins.

Second, there is the end-goal: an attempt to extract more work out of people, through a series of measures designed to increase people's dependency on the labour market, weaken the bargaining power of labour, and reduce remuneration relative to hours worked. Welfare cuts, and various types of workfare, are all useful to this end. By forcing people to be more dependent on employers, it ensures they are in a weaker position to demand better pay or more holidays: this is what it means to "make work pay".

The "hardworking" thematic is thus a populist-right appeal which encodes a series of policies designed to profoundly transform British society. And the worst mugs are those "hardworking" enough to fall for it.