Imagine the scene in parliament late last night: a scruffy man with a ruffled open shirt, swinging a plastic carrier bag, staggers up to the escalator near the Palace of Westminster, yelling wildly at the leader of the opposition: “Jeremy, let’s have an election!” Corbyn was on a phone call, but a bewildered phalanx of shadow ministers clocked who it was: “career psychopath” (in the words of David Cameron) Dominic Cummings, the UK’s co-prime minister. “I thought he was a drunk tourist,” reports Cat Smith, one of the shadow ministers present last night.

A drunk tourist is an apt description for Cummings: intoxicated with his own overblown reputation and sense of destiny; a man with foul-mouthed contempt for a party he’s simply passing through, subjecting it to a reign of terror in order to secure his precious Brexit project.

Whether Cummings is a clever man, or just a man who wants us to think he is clever, remains unproven. What is clear is that Cummings and Boris Johnson are gearing up to run an election on a manifesto promising what the cultural theorist Stuart Hall once described as “authoritarian populism”. Such populism, wrote Hall, “unlike classic fascism, has retained most (though not all) of the formal representative institutions in place, and ... at the same time has been able to construct itself an active popular consent”. This was Hall’s description of Thatcherism, but it is a more apt description of a Johnson regime attempting to implement what the Tory hard Brexiteers always craved: to use the 2016 referendum result to craft a national-conservative revolution.

After four years of press panic about the “Stalinist authoritarianism” of Labour, not one of its MPs has been deselected. Yet after assuming the premiership just six weeks ago, Johnson has already shut down parliament, purged 21 of his opponents, and called into question whether he’d obey the law.

The outrage at his assault on democratic norms will mean nothing to the political coalition Johnson seeks to craft in the coming election. The Brexiteers claim they want to turn Britain into a low-tax and low-regulation trading island like Singapore; but the direction Johnson and Cummings are heading in looks more like Hungary, a nation ruled by an authoritarian, anti-immigrant, antisemitic regime which the Tories have voted to defend. The trappings of democracy are maintained, but the substance is hollowed out: what its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, lauds as an “illiberal democracy”. Opponents are vilified as enemies of the people and George Soros is cast as a rootless Jewish financier wielding disproportionate and sinister power. Media opponents have been stifled.

‘Dominic Cummings has a foul-mouthed contempt for a party he’s simply passing through, subjecting it to a reign of terror in order to secure his precious Brexit project.’ Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

The Tories won’t borrow the antisemitism, but a government whose leader described Muslim women as “bank robbers” and “letterboxes” will likely fuel bigotry. Migrant-bashing will be combined with law-and-order authoritarianism and targeted spending hikes on austerity-ravaged education and healthcare. Just as the Tories in the 1980s incited bigotry against gay people for political gain, it’s now reported in the Times that No 10 has “been polling ‘culture war issues’, such as transgender rights, to see whether they can be weaponised against Labour in northern working-class constituencies”.

Tax cuts will be offered across the board, but weighted towards older, affluent, high-turnout voters. For the third of the population for whom Brexit overrides all else, there will be a do-or-die commitment to prise an exit from the grip of a nefarious, disloyal political elite; for others, Brexit weariness and tedium will be exploited. Johnson won’t need to muzzle the press, of course: most will show slavish loyalty.

The onslaught against Johnson’s opponents will have grim consequences. An increasingly thuggish far right see him as their own: extremists have called a demo this weekend to “get behind our Queen & Boris”. Their support for his government has largely escaped scrutiny. Johnson may disavow their enthusiastic approval, but as was said of a Trumpian candidate in Florida last year: “The racists believe he’s a racist.”

Yet hubris may collide with nemesis. Britain’s dominant business class – the Tories’ traditional key base and source of funding – are divided, with some fearing no deal more than Corbynism. Labour can easily outflank the Tories’ spending plans, arguing that the Conservative fiscal U-turn is an acceptance that austerity has failed and that their opponents were right all along. Just as Labour should never compete with the Tories over being tough on immigration – voters will always believe the Tories more – the political debate is shifting to Corbyn’s favoured ground. Tax cuts can be matched with tangible policy commitments, whether it be on childcare or scrapping tuition fees.

The polling shows that, while most remainers are repulsed by no deal, leave supporters are lukewarm and conflicted. There are early signs – in polling and on the streets – of remainers coming back to Labour. In an election, a binary choice in most constituencies between enabling a no-deal Johnson government, or a Labour administration offering a public vote with the option of remain – perhaps an immediate referendum with the other option of “renegotiate” – could cut through.

Johnson’s dire performances this week in the House of Commons, and his bumbling bluster when under pressure in the Tory leadership campaign, have challenged the myth of his charismatic, campaigning selling point. Corbyn, meanwhile, has regained his mojo as an election campaign – where he’s in his element – approaches.

The Tory strategy may yet succeed: authoritarian populism fused with targeted spending hikes and Brexit fatigue may triumph. Labour cannot simply repeat their 2017 campaign – and Johnson’s opponents may still divide. A bleak, intolerant Britain beckons if so. But I wonder, as he parades the Commons, drunk on self-confidence, if Cummings is starting to wonder if he’s not quite as clever as he thinks.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist