Voting in the European elections is over, with the results about to come in. The Tory leadership race, which will be won by a hardline Brexiter, has just begun. Everyone who cares about the Labour party and the country is braced with a sense of despair.

I want reports of high turnout in Remain areas to reflect a huge gain in votes for Labour. I fear that won’t be the case. Pessimistic predictions put Labour in third place in the EU election, behind Nigel Farage’s far-right party and the born-again Liberal Democrats. Even optimists have us in second place, nowhere near the percentage of votes we’d need to win a general election.

This was the first election I can remember where Labour members said they couldn’t support us. One member I met in Bristol broke down in tears as he told me that, after 44 years of voting Labour, he was going to vote Lib Dem. Our performance is a direct result of our mealy-mouthed backing for a public vote on Brexit when it is being demanded loud and clear by the overwhelming majority of our members and voters.

Polls show Labour has been losing up to four times more voters to parties giving full backing to a people’s vote than to Farage. And those same polls show we would have beaten him by a country mile if we had unambiguously backed a public vote on any form of Brexit.

Once results are in, we must channel our frustration into winning those voters back. Never again can Labour policy on the most crucial issue of our generation be on the wrong side of its members and voters. Never again can we find ourselves hedging our bets when we needed to make a historic choice about which side we’re on. Lots of Labour people voted Leave in 2016 for good reasons. But the Brexit reality we now face is a million miles from what was promised in that referendum, and we can’t accept it.

Labour voters and members saw our position in this election for what it was: a deliberate, self-defeating attempt to triangulate between different groups. A decision based on an electoral calculation rather than our core values. The Labour party is the greatest engine of progress this country has ever known, but I fear that unless our policy on Brexit changes we will not have the opportunity to be the radical reforming government millions of people need.

The campaign to change that begins now. A small number of people on Labour’s national executive determined our position going into the European election. From now on it must be our members who decide it. Thousands of party activists are supporting motions to go to conference demanding the party campaigns for a public vote. Some members tell me it’s too late. The conference is a month before the next EU deadline, not allowing time to campaign on any new position. I agree, and I’ll support methods to give members their say earlier.

Rightwingers are trying to spin this election as a mandate for Farage’s hard Brexit. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If the polls are right, just a third of people will have given their support to Farage. Although he may have topped the poll, that does not mean a majority of voters, let alone a majority of the country, want his backward-looking, catastrophic vision of Brexit.

I fear the Conservative party will learn the wrong lesson from these results as it embarks on a leadership election where candidates compete for who can be the most Faragiste. There is a real risk a new Tory prime minister will seek to take the UK crashing out of Europe with no deal by simply running the clock down to the 31 October deadline.

To force this form of Brexit on the British people when it is clearly opposed by a majority in both parliament and the country would be a democratic outrage with consequences that will poison our politics for a generation or more.

That is why Labour urgently needs to rethink its position and realign with members and voters and establish a bulwark against Farage’s dark vision. The only way to defeat the far right and build a lasting settlement on Brexit is to allow the public back into this decision. For our party’s sake, but most of all for Britain’s sake, Labour needs to find some backbone on Brexit, find our voice – and do it fast.

Tom Watson is deputy leader of the Labour party