Happy Brexit Christmas, everyone. This is not taking back control; this is no one in control, as bad economic news batters in day after day. Storm warnings of a global Trump trade war threaten, but the Brexit limbo is causing our own made-in-Britain slump. We are not yet at the cliff edge, just slipping down a mudslide of decline.

Asos’s profits warning, which knocked 40% off its shares, was a lightning strike. The thousands of retail jobs already lost signify something more ominous than people simply switching from high street to home shopping. The drop in footfall by a startling 4% in the run-up to Christmas shows people are not buying, and Brexit is a reason why. Business investment, always dismal by OECD standards, is now flat on the floor. Britain’s warped economy, overreliant on property prices in the south-east, the City and retail, now sees Brexit hammering all three, and manufacturing is falling back too. “Overseas property landlords are beating a retreat,” warns the Financial Times.

Corbyn says Labour tabling motion of no confidence in May because Brexit vote delayed – Politics live Read more

Good, you might say. Who wants mad over-consumption at Christmas, a mass-purchase of tat destined for charity shops? It’s high time we had a property crash, and good riddance to the City. But pulling down what we have before building something better just loses good jobs and empties the Treasury. Who gets hit hardest? Not wealthy homeowners in the south-east who did not feel the cold wind of recession. Every gust harms the poorest, who still earn less than before 2008 and are doubly stricken as a result of universal-credit cuts. The north-south divide is widening, with no industrial strategy in sight. What a time for the government to spend £2bn preparing for a no deal that the great majority of MPs and voters will resist with every sinew. (Spend it instead on those free school breakfasts for every child May promised in her manifesto, but never delivered.) What a lousy time to plan an 80% cut in EU immigration, pole-axing social care, agriculture and hospitality.

Those gap-toothed shopping parades, emptiest in the poorest places, sap public confidence. Vanishing landmark department stores look like emblems of national decline, amid distant Westminster warfare over backstops and WTO rules. Bad news takes on a Brexit inflection that makes the merry insouciance of Brexiteers look even more delusional.

Leadership hopefuls shamelessly playing fast and loose with the future of the economy, in pursuit of crazed ambition, add to the mood of chaos. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, an erstwhile remainer, pretends to think the country will “flourish and prosper” with no deal, as “we’ve faced bigger challenges in our history”. (Yes, but never through acts of random self-destruction such as this.) Professed enthusiasm to lead Britain into a no-deal Brexit ought to be a disqualification on the grounds of diminished mental capacity.

Play Video Theresa May makes statement to parliament after EU summit - watch live

But Hunt was duly saluted by the Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh as “the first senior minister to publicly back a Full British Brexit – precisely what 17.4m voters ordered”. Did they, precisely? How does anyone know? That’s the heart of the argument for a final-say referendum. No one could know last time with what deal, on what terms, we might leave the EU. There was no tick-box available to express an option on the ballot papers.

All those Tory MPs who engineered this political crisis, elected on a manifesto promising a nation-splitting referendum, had no idea what the deal would be. They don’t even agree now on what the referendum meant, or what the outcome should be. Obliged to face the consequences of their foolhardy action, they keep changing their minds, just as voters do. Only months ago Hunt said: “No deal would be a mistake we would regret for generations” – and he is only one of myriad swivellers, currently moving in all directions.

So when Theresa May told the Commons that she still hoped to get a legally binding time limit to her backstop, no one knew what her final draft would be. Yet she still claimed a public vote on this unknowable deal would “break faith with the British people”. She knows, we know, everyone knows that’s hokum on stilts. Despite delaying the “meaningful” vote to within a hair’s breadth of the 21 January deadline, the possibility of a referendum grows a little closer every day, as every other option fails to win support. May’s adamantine refusal to consider a vote can join all her other dead red lines. What else can she do but change her mind, as people must when faced with no alternative?

Riots! Blood on the streets! MPs of the traditional law-and-order party can already be heard justifying a future pro-Brexit rampage if the referendum happens. Against what? Against the electorate being given a democratic choice on how or whether to leave the EU on the terms on offer. Riots against democracy would be a British first. The vehemence of Brexiteer opposition shows they fear they would lose, so Charles Moore in the Telegraph calls for a boycott. A low turnout lets them reject the result – and that’s low politics.

This is the ferocious politics of the last ditch, and ultimately it’s not about trade or even about protecting the economy. This is the most profound political dispute of our lifetimes, with EU membership only a flimsy cover story. A revolutionary cult has captured the Conservative party, whose crystal-clear agenda they never dare reveal when broadcasting. You have to read their outriders to understand their project.

The Guardian view on the May deal: sinking not waving | Editorial Read more

In the Telegraph and the Spectator, writers openly advocate Trumpian policies. Take the last Sunday Telegraph comment section: the leader calls for “massive tax cuts” and “unilateral free trade”, at a stroke killing off farming and manufacturing with cheap, unregulated imports; “radical deregulation” is advocated by arch-Brexiteer Daniel Hannan; an author from the rightwing thinktank Civitas suggests abolishing the NHS and BBC as currently financed. You don’t hear Brexiteer ministers confess this vision of wild west, tax-haven capitalism on the Andrew Marr Show. But that’s what drives them on. The EU is just one brake on their heart’s desire – but the greater obstacle by far is the British people: that’s why they never dare test their dreams on the ordinary public.

The EU sprang from a social democratic spirit. It is imperfect, often disappointing, but binds us to laudable rights and responsibilities. Forget this week’s government offer of better rights for workers: Brexiteers know they can rip it up if we leave, along with detested health and safety and environmental protection. Any final-say referendum has to expose the Brexiteers’ true intent, to plant the fight where it belongs – for social justice, welfare, working and human rights.

That’s why it was so mightily depressing that yet again today Corbyn failed to call a real vote of no confidence in the government, to avoid backing an EU referendum. How bizarre that this most leftwing of leaders ducks the EU confrontation that is the ideological battle of our time. Instead he still echoes May in “respecting” a will of the people that neither he nor anyone else can pretend to know until they are asked. If the Conservative cultists are to be seen off, the true nature of this apparently arcane EU dispute needs to be fought out in the open.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist