It’s such a derogatory term, ‘culture war’. Of course, it may fall out of use before long, in favour of the simpler concept ‘war’ – at least if we can believe the ominous World War Three rhetoric from such unlikely recruiting sergeants as Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Liberal Democrats. Who would ever have associated Ed Davey’s rainbow shower of maniacs with the military defence of the nation?

The irony is that, had the culture war been fought more successfully by the sane, there might not be such an unnerving turn in the national conversation. It’s not as if the likes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Iran’s leaders haven’t taken notice.

Plenty of commentators have pointed out that it’s a little rich to expect young British men to defend a country they’ve been raised to despise. It’s unsurprising, given what that postmodern mindset has produced in every British institution from the BBC to universities to the British Army itself, that those very same young men might look at their country and think it’s not worth defending any more. It’s been a sort of self-fulfilling contempt.

The establishment’s loathing of the Judeo-Christian culture that built the UK was particularly notable in the recent assisted-suicide debate. It’s not that Christian beliefs were a deciding factor in the very widespread opposition to the horribly drafted bill. It’s that every objection, whether from disability-rights campaigners or medical bodies, was met with howls of contempt by supporters of assisted suicide about ‘religious fundamentalism’. No argument about safeguarding, boundaries or judicial oversight was entertained if some atheist on X could dismiss it with a sneer of ‘faith’.

Kate Forbes of the SNP, a former leadership contender, spoke back in June at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference. She emphasised the value of the Judeo-Christian tradition, praising Biblical concepts of ‘freedom, liberty, human dignity, the worth of life and flourishing for all’. She added with regard to the anti-religionists of the assisted-suicide debate: ‘Their moral framework, their basis of decision-making, is accepted without question, as though anybody who is free of the burden of an inner conscience grounded in historical truths is unbiased and unprejudiced.’

Forbes’s erstwhile colleague, former MP Hannah Bardell, promptly exploded on X: ‘Are you kidding?… We need to be taking [on] the far right, not aiding and abetting it, and attending their events.’

Bardell’s simplistic political ignorance has her conflate Christianity and its (albeit complex) political heritage with some fascist bogeyman. Meanwhile, Forbes is exactly right in her thesis that the West will ‘pay a heavy price’ if it betrays the culture that built the freest and most prosperous societies in history.

It’s ironic that the left despises people of faith. After all, modern leftism is, as Forbes implied, a faith-based movement. It worships at the altar of the Big State, loves to restrict and tax private enterprise, enjoyment and initiative. Its current devout flock in the Commons wilfully ignores all evidence of the economic harm they’re doing. And they say Christians are unscientific?

They certainly have no cause to sneer at faith groups. Current leftist ideology is itself based on airy creeds like the perfectibility of human beings and the equal value of all cultures. Look, guys, maybe your religion will turn out to be the One True Faith! Maybe universal welfare dependency, open borders and a strict nanny state are the heavenly future – nobody has a functional crystal ball. But while we await the Day of Revelation, let’s accept that it is at best an unproven theory.

Never having been able to win effectively on the economy (stupid), the Labour Party has picked culture as a battleground while purporting to scorn it: assisted suicide, the Chagos surrender, the inhumane and badly designed puberty-blockers trial, a ‘conversion therapy ban’ that would end in legally endorsed conversion therapy by another name… all these battles (and more) have been dirty and loud and replete with casualties.

If opposing all this is a ‘culture war’, then let us insist that it’s a just war. Liberal traditions, democratic values and actual science are worth fighting for. Without that culture, we won’t find anyone to fight threats from beyond (and within) our borders. Because, let’s face it: the nation will have nothing left to defend.