So, the politicians have crowned a new prime minister. Theresa May, a remain supporter responsible for the greatest increase in immigration in Britain’s history, may well be popular with a largely Europhile Conservative parliamentary party still struggling to accept its resounding rejection by Conservative voters on 23 June – but she would probably have struggled against the Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom if it had been allowed to go to a membership vote.

She is, in a way, a kind of reverse Corbyn: the Labour leader has a huge mandate from the party membership but no mandate among the party elites, while May has a huge mandate from the party elites and no mandate from the party membership.

To listen to the media luvvies who have invested a lot of time (and a lot of lunches) in May, her triumph was all about experience. She has been widely lauded as one of Britain’s longest-serving home secretaries – yet very little has been said about the collapse in police morale or the running down of our border force and coastguard in that time. Indeed, the largely positive assessment of May’s tenure as home secretary, based on time served rather than track record, speaks volumes about how far the standards we set for those in public life have fallen.

But the deed has been done. And without a single vote cast outside the magic circle of Westminster, we have a new premier. This shabby state of affairs, in my view, presents a major opportunity to bring together Nigel Farage’s people’s army – those conservatives who actually believe in Britain, and the patriotic working-class voters who rejected the Blairite left on referendum day, united either within Ukip or a new political movement.

Fortunately, thanks to the pressure brought to bear on the incoming administration by Leave.EU, the new prime minister has had to give key posts to excellent leave ministers, including David Davis and Liam Fox – talented politicians who, unlike Michael Gove, Dominic Cummings and the rest of the self-regarding Vote Leave cabal, were willing to work with us and with Ukip to achieve a goal bigger than themselves.

Thanks to the pressure brought by Leave.EU, the prime minister has had to give key posts to excellent leave ministers

Even so, news of May’s coronation saw Ukip’s membership rocket by over 1,000 in a single day. All over social media, we can see hundreds of Conservatives trading in their blue membership cards for purple ones. Why? Because Britain backed Brexit, and no matter how strenuously the remain campaigners who are responsible for delivering it insist they will respect the vote, leave supporters simply don’t believe them.

And this discontent goes beyond Conservative members who are rightly miffed at being stitched up with a remain MP as leader after they voted for Brexit: just look at the shambolic state of the Labour party.

First, its working-class voters backed Brexit in a big way. Where do they look for representation now, never mind leadership? Corbyn may have been a reluctant remainer, but – foolishly – he allowed the Blairites to twist his arm for the sake of party unity (for all the good it did him). If he had stuck by his Eurosceptic principles and left the Labour party officially non-aligned, he would have been well placed to take the credit for the Brexit vote and been strengthened against his enemies in the parliamentary party.

Instead, he’s ended up in the worst position possible, having backed remain but failed to deliver Labour voters. With some in his party now bleating that the referendum result was “advisory and non-binding” and calling for parliament to overturn it, it is more clear than ever to working people that the Labour party is now run by and for a metropolitan elite, and does not speak for them.

As for the Liberal Democrats, they’re now campaigning on a platform of taking Britain back into the EU before we’ve even left it, desperate to regain some relevance by appealing to the spoiled millennials throwing protests outside parliament.

So now, more than ever, the country needs Ukip to step up, or for a new movement to step forward. We won’t achieve anything by tempering ourselves to create another bland, centrist party. We need to lower the barriers to entry for politics, and reach out to new audiences online, as Beppe Grillo’s revolutionary Five Star Movement has done in Italy.

Leave.EU has paved the way with its pioneering social media effort, which has over 1 million followers and supporters. The articles and clips we shared alongside our own original content and videos reached a weekly audience of 10 to 15 million, many of whom would never dream of tuning into the Daily Politics or poring over the newspapers.

While ignored by the traditional media, which we were bypassing, internal polling suggests that this new way of doing politics made all the difference to the final result on 23 June.

We now need to push it further, lowering prices for party membership, putting more control over the party in the hands of the grassroots, and reaching into areas of the country that the mainstream parties have long forgotten or taken for granted.

We need to show the public how we, and they, were right to hold their nerve and stick their necks out for Brexit, even with all the combined powers of the political class, media establishment and corporate interests howling against us. More than that, we need to empower people to help shape the new Britain that Brexit has made possible, pushing for a Swiss-style model of direct democracy, which allows citizens to propose their own laws and veto the schemes of the politicians.

Britain has its brightest days in front of it, but only if we realise that winning this referendum was not the final hurdle. We have a long way to go before a real Brexit happens, and will have to travel even further before we can realise all the opportunities it allows.

Ukip, or a new movement that combines the best in that party with other forces that came together for the referendum, represents our best hope of completing that journey.