Britain in 2018 has the feel of a Netflix drama approaching its season finale. It’s the classic “how on earth does anyone get out of this one?” kind of cliffhanger, with all of the key protagonists confronted by their nemesis. Despite the unpredictability inherent in one of Britain’s most severe peacetime political crises, there is one plotline guaranteed to feature when you next tune in. In every possible scenario the ascendant far right stands to profit.

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This is not specific to Britain and our Brexit-induced political tumult. Of the four biggest democracies on Earth, three – India, the US and Brazil – have elected leaders who can either be described as far right or backed by the far right. Far-right parties are in government in Italy and Austria; both Hungary and Poland are ruled by authoritarian rightwing extremists; and far-right parties have chalked up their biggest electoral triumphs since the military defeat of European fascism in nations ranging from France to Sweden.

Austerity and economic insecurity have collided with the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, at a time when global instability and warfare have driven millions to flee violence and persecution, a minority of whom have arrived on European shores to be met with hostility. Anti-Muslim prejudice has been mainstreamed by politicians and media outlets alike: just as antisemitism became a “respectable” racism between the wars, so it is today with Islamophobia.

To understand how to defeat Britain’s far right, we have to be clear about how we arrived at this point. Mass immigration did occur under the New Labour governments, but without any accompanying pro-migrant politics being articulated: indeed, just the opposite. Tony Blair’s administration stripped benefits from refugees in favour of vouchers; it denounced “asylum cheats” and spoke of refugee children “swamping” schools from which they were banned; and attempted to outflank the Tories on anti-migrant rhetoric.

David Cameron’s subsequent governments denounced Labour’s “uncontrolled immigration”, and portrayed the movement of people to the UK solely as a problem to be contained, while setting impossible targets on numbers that were not even close to being met. Theresa May, then home secretary, was the most ardently anti-migrant member of his cabinet, notoriously sending “Go home” vans to mixed communities. An inherently divisive referendum handed a megaphone to a demagogically anti-migrant campaign whose lies and bile led to a surge in hate crimes.

Mainstream newspapers such as the Times and the Sun have been reprimanded by the press regulator, Ipso, for printing “distorted” and “misleading” news stories about Muslims, but the damage is already done. Meanwhile austerity policies – with the worst squeeze in wages for generations, a growing lack of decent affordable housing and public services under strain – provides fertile ground for the politics of scapegoating.

The next chapter will be far uglier. On 9 December a convicted fraudster and thug named Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – or “Tommy Robinson”, as he styles himself – will lead a so-called Great Brexit Betrayal protest in London. The Tory Brexiteers ran a referendum of impossible promises in 2016; the consequent disillusionment is an unmissable opportunity for the far right. Research by the Hope Not Hate campaign provides striking evidence of how acute the sense of betrayal might be. Take the constituency of Dudley North, where nearly 70% of voters opted for leave. Here, 58% believe that their economic prospects will improve after leaving the European Union, while just 4% believe the same would happen if Britain maintained its membership. What happens if a pro-austerity Tory government stays in power and life does not get better?

The classic hard-right trope is the “stab in the back” myth, of a great national project – normally going to war – betrayed by internal subversion and a lack of fight. Whether May’s plan passes or fails, a narrative will be woven of a true, pure Brexit betrayed by elites. Yaxley-Lennon wishes to present himself as the leader of the 52% who opted for leave in the referendum. He must not be gifted this mantle. A counter-demonstration that day must emphasise that its participants include those who voted remain, and differ on the question of a second referendum, as well as those who voted for leave. Yaxley-Lennon must be isolated as the idol of Britain’s small minority of fascists, and nobody else. Scrutiny must fall, too, on funding from the United States for far-right movements such as his.

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Little plays into the far right’s hands more than the portrayal of leave voters as a bloc of bigots and brainwashed dupes, or a remain campaign with an image of establishment entitlement. Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles recalls a focus group in Sheffield before the referendum. When shown a remain campaign quote about Brexit being bad for London’s financial sector, one working-class Labour-supporting woman responded: “Good. Maybe they’ll feel the pain we’re living with.” Sympathising with this pain – and offering radical solutions to it – is a precondition to defeating the far right.

It may well be that a second referendum becomes the only option. But such a campaign will be far more vicious than the last, with a leave campaign offered a megaphone for several months to whip up bigotry and bitterness. There are those who claim that even mentioning this unavoidable fact is an implicit surrender to the far right, but given the surge in hate crimes in 2016, we must at least engage with and prepare for this inevitability. Senior supporters of Jeremy Corbyn fear that, in such a referendum, they will be boxed in as representing a “status quo” option when, at a time of justified fury with the existing social order, their entire political project thrives on a sense of insurgency.

The danger is that this mantle will instead be seized by the Tory populist right and the extra-parliamentary far right. Whatever now happens in the coming tumultuous weeks and months, those who oppose a Tory Brexit must base their politics on a radical anti-establishment break with the status quo. The turn-back-the-clock “centrist” politics of Chuka Umunna or Anna Soubry cannot answer the grievances that have led to the current political moment. Defeating May’s plan must be presented as the first stage in a peaceful, democratic revolution to rebuild Britain – uniting both remain and leave voters – to eliminate the injustices that led to this crisis. It is when the far right are able to deceitfully dress themselves in the garb of anti-establishment rebellion that they thrive: we must not let them.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

• This article was amended on 29 November 2018 because an earlier version referred to Sheffield as the largest city to vote leave. Birmingham, which voted leave, is bigger.