By any yardstick, the European election results were remarkable for the Brexit party. Launched just six weeks ago, it secured 32% of the vote. Taking to the stage having just been re-elected at the South East England count, Nigel Farage proclaimed that if Britain did not leave on 31 October, then his new party would face down the Conservatives and Labour at the next general election.

Those who point out that the parties committed to a no-deal Brexit only achieved around a third of the vote – and were outvoted by unambiguously pro-remain parties – are missing the point. Farage’s project has always been to reshape the right of politics. His has never been a majoritarian project, but it never had to be. Ten years after taking over as Ukip leader in 2006, Farage had successfully manoeuvred the European Union to the centre of British politics, leading to the vote to leave.

Just as Farage used the 2014 European election result to force the Tories into offering the 2016 referendum, he will use the 2019 result to push the Tories into backing a no-deal exit by making the end of October deadline firm. Farage knows there is no other deal on offer than the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May, thrice-defeated in parliament and politically dead. To demand that date is to insist on no deal.

Bizarrely, having campaigned for a no-deal Brexit in these elections, Farage also demanded a place in the UK’s negotiating team, trumpeting the business experience of many of his party’s candidates. But this wasn’t a sincere demand to negotiate for nothing – it is part of a strategy to avoid the blame in no-deal chaos. If the UK does crash out on Halloween, you can be sure that Farage won’t take any responsibility for it. He will claim he would have negotiated a “managed no deal”, yet another cloak for an unquestionably extreme policy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Combined with his attacks on the media, Farage has adopted the Trump playbook.’ Brexit party supporters in Chester. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

But Farage’s message was not just about Brexit. During the campaign, he and his populist troupe of pantomime villains launched a full-frontal assault on the establishment. Farage used tactics reminiscent of the “stab-in-the-back” policy first adopted by the far right in Germany in the 1920s, becoming a central piece of the Nazi narrative in the 1930s. He repeatedly claimed that the British negotiating team were the “enemy within”, that May’s deal could “only have been signed by a nation defeated in war”, and that the people had been “betrayed”. Combined with his attacks on the media, Farage has adopted the Trump playbook: undermine sources of facts so that people are left to trust only their instincts, not institutions. Farage himself may not be a demagogue, but in this campaign he has laid the foundations for demagoguery.

Yet there are still reasons to be hopeful. The labour movement is and has always been the most powerful force against the far right in this country and across Europe. From Cable Street to the BNP, it has always fought back. It was not deployed properly in these elections, leaving Farage free to storm across the battlefield. The Labour leadership’s disastrous strategy was to sit these elections out; the architects of that approach in the leader’s office are now under pressure to quit. Farage won’t be so lucky again.

European election latest results 2019: across the UK Read more

As Tory leadership contenders commit to no deal in the face of the rise of the Brexit party, it has become more apparent that one-nation Conservatives will stand in their way. Even the chancellor, Philip Hammond, left open the possibility that he would vote for a no-confidence motion to prevent a no-deal exit. The Labour party has sat on the fence on a negotiated exit, but has always been clear that it will oppose a no-deal Brexit, and this appalling result should shock the party into mobilising to fight for the people to have the final say and for the country to vote to remain.

Farage is shaping British politics once again and in a dangerous direction. It is time for all decent people to resist his devious tune. The European elections aren’t a wake-up call to deliver Brexit at any cost. They are a clear message to fight the only Brexit now available – a no-deal crash-out that could tip millions more into poverty and humiliate this country on the world stage. It is a fight we cannot afford to lose.

• Tom Kibasi is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and chair of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice