A government that can terrify a population can usually do what it wants with it. If nothing else survives of his journalism, HL Menckens warning from 1918 will never perish: The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

British Conservatives and the US Republicans have added a modern game to the demagogic playbook. They are creating an imaginary fear that elections are being rigged in order to rig elections. They will protect democracy by removing the right to vote.

Boris Johnsons hobgoblin is a fake voter, almost certainly from an ethnic minority. These masters of disguise steal honest citizens ballots by pretending to be them at polling stations. When the honest citizens arrive, election officials tell them that they have already voted and call the police.

Fake voters are a fake. If they werent, you would have read hundreds of articles about people whose identities had been stolen. The governments own research found that personation fraud at the polling station accounted for just eight of the allegations of electoral fraud made in 2018. When Lutfur Rahman, the corrupt mayor of Tower Hamlets, was found guilty in the biggest electoral fraud trial of recent times, the fraud consisted of funnelling bribes to Bengali organisations that were totally ineligible for public money, not for arranging for body doubles to flood polling stations.

Voter suppression, the deliberate attempt to influence the outcome of an election by stopping poor and black voters opposing the conservative elite, is normally accompanied by lies about stolen elections. Donald Trump and the US Republicans had a strategy to brainwash their supporters after their defeat in the 2020 US presidential election. They fed them allegations of double voting, the dead voting, and out-of-state voters moving into states with tight contests. Not one allegation stood up in court, but at least Trump made the effort to provide a cover story.

British democracy is so decayed Johnson does not feel the need to lie. He happily admits the hobgoblin is a fantasy from his calculating mind. Asked by Ian Blackford of the Scottish National party last week how he could justify his Trumpian tactics, Johnson said he wanted to protect elections from the idea of voter fraud. Not the reality of a crime that barely exists for you would need thousands of impersonators to swing an election but from the idea, the notion, the paranoid fear that it might exist, even though it doesnt.

He is attempting to disfranchise poor voters by demanding that everyone produces photo ID before they vote. Ministers dismiss concerns about the 2.1 million people without ID by saying that councils can issue the requisite passes, while knowing full well that most voters wont know how to apply for them. Meanwhile, in trials of voter ID in local elections, 750 of the 2,000 people polling stations turned away for having no ID never came back. Maybe they could not be bothered to go home and search through their documents, or had to go to work. No one checked, but the point remains that Johnsons laws against a phantom menace will stop not only people without a driving licence or passport voting, but others who do not have the time or inclination to negotiate his new bureaucracy.

His willingness to attack fundamentals of democracy marks Johnson out as an extreme rather than a mainstream right-winger. The division between the two is nowhere as clear-cut as it appears. Professor Tim Bale, a historian of British conservatism, invites readers to consider who delivered a speech saying that a liberal elite was turning the British into foreigners in their own land. Talk about tax and they call you greedy. Talk about crime and they call you reactionary. Talk about asylum and they call you racist. It wasnt Nigel Farage during the Brexit referendum in 2016, but William Hague, the leader of the Conservative party, in 2001.

Farage had his opportunity when David Cameron briefly moved the Conservative party away from Euro-extremism and a hard line on immigration in the early 00s. And all he did was mouth the slogans of previous Tory leaders. The fringe does not always take over the mainstream and pull it to the right or left. Often, it is impossible to disentangle the two and decide who is the monkey and who is the organ grinder.

In Riding the Populist Wave, published next month, political scientists from across Europe emphasise that the difference between the radical and mainstream right is as much about means as ends. Almost by definition, populists are disloyal actors who do not accept the rules of the democratic system that mainstream politicians abide by.

Johnsons attempt to deny the vote to secure an electoral advantage, along with his attacks on parliament and the independence of the judiciary, BBC and civil service, marks him a member of the Trump club of rightwing extremists. Meanwhile, his policies are designed to ensure that a party such as Ukip never outflanks the Conservatives on the right again, and Westminster is filled with bellows to punish asylum seekers, cut international aid and damn England footballers who protest against racism.

I am not sure the Conservatives will listen to my advice, but I am going to give it anyway. They need to watch their backs. The mainstream Republicans in France moved so far to the right to see off Marine Le Pen that Emmanuel Macron and his centrists were able to destroy them.

David Davis, who is hardly a woke liberal, told me the prime minister acts like a caricature metropolitan elitist who thinks Leave voters are thick, ugly and racist rather than men and women concerned about tax bills and public services. His stunts reveal a populist who doesnt understand his people, and thinks they will be satisfied with stupid arguments and mindless cruelty.

As if to prove the point, research by the Electoral Commission found that 90% of the public thought voting at polling stations was safe. Boris Johnsons hobgoblin does not even haunt the nightmares of most of his core supporters. Perhaps one day a few of them will tire of a prime minister who treats them as if they were terrified toddlers and put a cross against another politicians name.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

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Fake voters exist only in Boris Johnsons fevered imagination - The Guardian