What happens next is outlandish. About 100,000 of an ageing tribe, whose party scraped a derisory 9% in the European elections, are about to choose the next prime minister for all the rest of the UK’s 46 million voters. The Conservative party, which likes to call itself “the most successful party in the western world”, is now funded more lavishly by the legacies of its dead members than by its living ones.

The keys to Downing Street have been handed on before in this high-handed monarchical manner without an election, but that doesn’t make it any less disgracefully undemocratic, as with so much of our failing constitution. Avoiding the legitimacy of election did Gordon Brown no good at all, giving him the hunted air of an insecure Richard the Third-ish usurper. The success of both the Brexit party and the Liberal Democrats’ “Bollocks to Brexit” riposte has obliterated the illusions of middle-ground, fence-sitting compromisers. Tory fears of the Nigel Farage surge will make it all the more likely that the crown falls into Boris Johnson’s incapable hands. The new prime minister’s lack of legitimacy will be a serious weakness, after the party scored its lowest vote since 1832.

Labour needs to renew, rethink and gird up for a wholehearted challenge to the dark forces pushing for a no-deal Brexit

That abysmal result will see the Tories move heaven and earth not to call a self-immolating general election, which would let the Farage hordes on to their Westminster turf. But with the same cast of MPs, the new prime minister inherits the same parliamentary maze, an Escher drawing of impossible hyperbolic geometry where each staircase leads back to an infinite beginning. Extraordinary that a Tory chancellor of the exchequer says he may bring down his own government with a vote of no confidence if any step is taken towards the no-deal Brexit stair. Yet the new leader will have been chosen on a promise to take exactly that stairway to hell.

Trapped in the same paralysis as Theresa May, what happens next? The new leader will reach an impasse where going back to the people is the only escape parliament can agree: a referendum will look less alarming than a general election to both main parties. Instead of a mauling by Farage, the Tories would share his hard Brexit platform in a final conflict in this long culture war.

This is the only way to cauterise the gaping national split and confront once and for all the many dark issues that lurk beneath the nativist Brexit idea. By now, escaping from Brexit altogether offers a better long-term chance of recovery for the Tory party than being for ever branded with the dire consequences of a no-deal economic disaster.

In these elections remain was the winner, not Farage. What mattered beyond the number of seats won was the sum of remain votes. Lib Dem, Green, Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru and Change UK outpolled Brexit and Ukip by 40.4% remain to 34.9% hard Brexit. Now add in Labour and Conservative votes, divided – as pollsters Britain Thinks and YouGov suggest – by allocating 80% of Tory votes to leave, and 60% of Labour votes to remain. That suggests a remain win in a referendum by 50% to 47%. Certain? Of course not – it’s close – but this three-point remain majority certainly makes it a democratic outrage to press ahead with any kind of Brexit without giving voters the final say. And what is not in doubt is that there’s a clear majority against a no-deal Brexit.

Consider, too, as Paul Mason writes, that Labour’s calamitous campaign will force a radical change of direction. Defying all polling, all doorstep experience and its own membership, the clique around the leader fatally stifled the Labour remain voice. The usual tendency is to blame the courtiers, not the king – but if the pernicious old Lexit anti-Europeans in Jeremy Corbyn’s tight-knit entourage were replaced by the cannier pragmatism and pro-Europeanism of John McDonnell, Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry, Tom Watson and others, imagine what a full-blooded Labour remain campaign might yield.

True, it’s hard to visualise a sudden transformation in Corbyn from the petulant, incoherent figure he has been in this election. Could he plausibly do a barnstorming “remain and reform” campaign after three years of “honouring the result” and “delivering a Labour Brexit”? Possibly, once surrounded by a groundswell of all Labour’s talents set free to make the strong remain case. Attempts to silence any criticism of Labour’s hopeless Brexit stance by calling it a secret plot to oust Corbyn is merely self-justifying bluster by those who have brought their party so low.

Deborah Mattinson of Britain Thinks warns against either main party assuming that old loyalties resume, just because they have after previous one-hit-wonder EU election results. Voting Green and Lib Dem may become a habit with Labour voters, with 57% of 18- to 24-year-olds saying Corbyn puts party before nation, trusting him even less than May. Focus groups of erstwhile supporters are now, she says, “incredibly disappointed” in Labour. Painful though it is in Labour’s old heartlands, fence-sitting earned distrust from both sides, trust only to be regained now with an honest stand, still not forthcoming.

Labour needs to renew, rethink and gird up for a wholehearted challenge to the dark forces pushing for no deal. Unlike the last referendum’s half-hearted efforts, next time Labour needs to detribalise and share comradely platforms with all other remainers – just as many such as David Lammy have at every remain rally, embracing the full gamut, from Michael Heseltine and Vince Cable to Caroline Lucas and Nicola Sturgeon.

No deal would usher in an era of darkness, closed borders and closed minds. Labour would not necessarily gain when it all went badly and xenophobic blaming of others for our plight was exploited by the far right. No deal, dressed up as a “clean break”, seductively seems to many voters to promise an ending to all this agony, so the campaign against it has to spell out the never-ending years of strife ahead in trade deals, tariffs and penalties. No-dealers never admit the risk of strife when the clang of shutters on the Irish border breaks the Good Friday agreement.

Remainers won this European election and they would win a referendum too: why else do leavers resist the minor inconvenience of another ballot with such ferocity? The real “betrayal” of democracy would be any move towards Brexit without popular consent. Every media interviewer should challenge every Tory leadership candidate with the dishonesty of imposing their Brexit on what is now a remain nation.