For decades now, there has been disquiet among most Britons that our economic system is designed for the benefit of the few over the many. And in the referendum on Britain’s membership with the European Union, the many – and some of the few – voted in favour of Brexit to try to change that.

The rightwing political and media campaigns championing this result presented the case that Britain was suffering from a social, economic and even moral decline by maintaining its membership of the EU. According to these arguments, immigrants or bureaucrats in Brussels are making us poorer and less happy.

“We want our country back!” became the common refrain of many Brexiters and their media cheerleaders, promoting a belief that refugees and other vulnerable people fleeing war and climate change are behind all the social, economic and political ills of modern Britain.

Jeremy Corbyn united the Labour party under his positive position of remain and reform, but this nuanced position, the only honest one of the campaigns, was ignored wholesale by a media more interested in the drama of Tory splits. Jeremy argued that the answer to the inadequacies of the EU was not to storm out, but to work productively with other European progressive parties to push for a more accountable and democratic Europe that prioritises jobs, sustainable growth and workers’ rights.

All David Cameron could muster was a tawdry, fear-based campaign choreographing sombre predictions of economic doom if Britain were to vote for Brexit. Although those forecasts may come true – the pound fell at record speed to a 31-year low this morning and Nicola Sturgeon has already suggested a second Scottish independence referendum – scaring people about the consequences was bound to come unstuck, and so it has.

For many Brexit voters the prime minister just confirmed to them how little the winners of globalisation such as him cared about them, the losers.

If only the false promise that Britain’s malaise of disenfranchisement, voicelessness and an economic system that rewards the rich at the expense of the poor could be fixed by leaving the EU. The idea that migrants or politicians in Brussels are the problem with modern, unequal Britain was the canard at the core of the referendum debate.

Britain’s problems come from a place much closer to home. They come from successive government policies that have promoted the financialisation of our economies and public services, thereby valuing profit over people. They come from a Tory government slashing public services and widening inequality under the dubious banner of austerity. And they come from a prime minister who was passionate about nothing but his own political survival.

These problems are so systemic today that fixing them will take a radical change to the structure of both our economy and political class. Returning to the past will not resolve the very real and interconnected global issues of our time: vast and rising wealth inequality, climate change and a foreign policy trapped in a cycle of destruction.

The politics of the Conservative party, now more than ever influenced by the phenomenon of Ukip and Britain First, have no future; nor do the managerial, disconnected politics of New Labour.

The new politics of the new left, opening up across Europe, from Portugal to Greece, is in Britain represented by Jeremy Corbyn. It represents fairness and decency and a belief that the future is not something to be feared.

It aims to lift us all up from the bottom – through investment in public services and infrastructure – rather than to lift a few of us up from the top. And it represents the real change that was asked for by those Britons who voted for Brexit.