Imagine our collective surprise to wake up today and discover that prime minister Boris Johnson wasn’t deceased in a ditch. And yet, we hadn’t left the EU, as he promised, on 31 October, no ifs or buts. Like so many of Johnson’s vows, I’m sure he’d bluster that it was true when he made it.

Alas, as predicted, vast numbers of Britons took to the streets. On the night of 31 October, I myself beheld scores – perhaps hundreds – of small, black-clad and increasingly deranged beings roaming around house-to-house making demands.

Antifa? Black bloc? I’m hoping to read a measured analysis in the Daily Telegraph of why they’ll destroy us all if they don’t get whatever it is they want. This is what happens when Brexit doesn’t happen when Brexiteers claim it’s going to happen, and the fear of it happening if we don’t “get Brexit done” will be weaponised by a series of absolute weapons in the coming weeks.

But what of undead PM Boris Johnson, who seems to have shunned the privations of the ditch for the plush leather backseat of a prime ministerial limo. Here, he could be found recording a campaign video in which he promised do some other shit (I paraphrase very lightly). Johnson’s election videos now finish with a shot of his signature, which is possibly supposed to serve as some kind of Kitemark. Shitemark feels more accurate, given his record.

Only hours later, meanwhile, Nigel Farage took to a stage to offer Johnson an electoral pact with his Brexit party. “I’m a reasonable man,” Nigel explained, deploying the precise cliche spouted by extremely unreasonable movie villains, right before they threaten to kill everyone you love or stand in constituencies across Wearside. Anyway, this incendiary press conference took place at London’s Emmanuel Centre, the exact venue I watched Nigel resign as Ukip leader 10 days after the EU referendum. I wonder what keeps drawing him back to this place, other than the huge inscription on the wall reading “THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME”.

On the day of that 2016 resignation speech, a Daily Telegraph columnist by the name of Boris Johnson wrote that David Cameron needed a plan to stop the political “Diana moment” that was the immediate aftermath of the referendum. Having Googled, I see I described this as “a bit like the drunk chauffeur and 15 French paparazzi demanding to know why the Queen is still at Balmoral”. I’m not quite sure what the analogy is for where we currently find ourselves in 2019, other than to observe mildly that the exhumed chauffeur is now world king.

Arguably the most excruciating aspects of Farage’s press conference were his attempts at playing it cool about the phone sex he had with Donald Trump live on LBC last night. He never actually named the US president, preferring instead such gossamer touches as “to quote a friend of mine”, or “I was speaking to an American friend of mine last night”. Speaking of this American friend, it was hard not to think of him at Labour’s launch the day before, when Jeremy Corbyn smirked: “I ask our media, as good journalists, to just report what we say.” For all that Corbyn’s approach differs from that of the US president, his invited supporters got precisely the same message as they might from Trump, and dutifully booed the political editors of the BBC and Sky the minute they stood up to ask questions.

In fact, it has been rather difficult not to think of Nigel’s American friend all week, given that Johnson is pushing a “people versus parliament” election, while Corbyn is pushing for “people versus the elites”. Both of these are explicitly populist positions, with both the main party leaders claiming to speak for “the people”, an apparently homogenised mass being held back by an elite establishment that doesn’t include themselves. We might well be so far gone as a country not to notice this any more, but this should be a major alarm bell. Every single person buying into this “people versus –” stuff, on either side, should be extremely careful.

Populism, whether left or right, always ends badly. Honestly, what are the great populist success stories? Apart from Daenerys Targaryen. Oh, wait …

But honestly: where in the world is it really working out harmoniously for the people governed by these guys? The rightwing horror stories from the Philippines to Brazil barely need rehashing. But – and apologies for lapsing into political technicalese – the ones on the left all turn out to be divisive shits, too. Once leftwingers couldn’t eulogise Venezuela any more, their fandom transferred to Evo Morales in Bolivia. Forgive the spoilers, but if you’re keeping up with the show you’ll note that Evo has since trampled over liberal democracy, and Bolivia is this week mired in violent political protests amid claims he rigged the election.

There are many Corbyn supporters who believe that the only way to defeat right populism is with left populism. But on what evidence? Among those who seriously study the rise of the radical and far right, this is not widely concluded to be the case. Political scientist Cas Mudde, an expert in this field, stresses that neither “the people” nor “the elite” should ever be homogenised and essentialised, and that “politicians have to stop pretending to speak for ‘the people’”. Our societies are pluralist, and much more complex than such dangerous simplification allows.

Or as Farage put it this week: “We don’t trust the establishment.” Or as Corbyn put it this week: “We will take on the establishment.” Or as Boris Johnson has put it: “We are the party of the people.” Or as Corbyn now prefers it: Labour is “the true party of the people”.

Clearly, some of these claims are more credible or lunatic than others … and yet. Before the election is even formally under way, we have already seen three avowedly populist party leaders fighting over ownership of terms such as “the elite”, “the establishment” and “the people”. What could possibly go wrong? One way or another, we seem fated to find out.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist