During the inner-city riots that broke out across England in the 1980s, a woman surveying the wreckage in her community was heard to say: “There are no stories here, just the ghosts of other stories.” Looking over the wreckage of this referendum, I’m inclined to say the same thing.

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The ghosts of other stories this time include a wealthy and Europeanised middle class that has long felt more at home in Barcelona and Berlin than in many parts of its own country, the spectre of a dispossessed and marginalised section of the working class that gave up years ago on any hope of change for the better, and the poltergeist of an antiquated political system that rewards lying, cheating and faking. The referendum didn’t create any of these things; it just threw an unusually bright light on them.

I participated in the debates as a Labour-voting leaver who thought the EU places unacceptable restrictions on democracy in this country. At the same time I refused to join up with any official campaigns, as I guessed that sooner or later they’d be playing the traditional race card (another ghost from this country’s past, of course). Since the result I’ve been asked many times, with varying degrees of politeness, whether I regret my decision. The answer is, I don’t. In fact, what I saw during the debates and since the vote has only reinforced it.

I’m now even more convinced that if we don’t find a democratic way to close the fissures in our society, this country will be torn apart.

Of all the fissures, it is class that requires the most urgent attention. Remain tried to offer the status quo to millions of people for whom the status quo hasn’t been working for decades. The response to the result has served only to underline the problem. The barrage of hatred and intolerance unleashed by sections of the remain vote against the working class has been horrifying. I’ve seen this personally in the tweets and emails I’ve had to delete in the past few days.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in Brussels. ‘Scotland may be in a position to offer advice to England and Wales.’ Photograph: Geoffrey Van Der Hasselt/EPA

What is particularly galling is that many of those who have vented their fury on the poor and marginalised profess sympathy for them in other circumstances. As the Guardian columnist Paul Mason told a remain audience at an event last week that if they were feeling angry and disaffected after the referendum, they now had an inkling of what it feels like to be working class.

Now, after the shock of the result, those who don’t want to live in a bitterly divided society need to think urgently about how it can be changed. Some people, of course, have been doing this for years.

In 2014 the Tory MP Rory Stewart made a startling claim in a Guardian interview: “We pretend we’re run by people. We’re not run by anybody. The secret of modern Britain is there is no power anywhere.” He went on to suggest that politicians, journalists and bankers know they don’t have any power but think that others do.

If he’s right, the referendum was less “a nation decides” and more a runaway train crashing into the buffers at high speed. Stewart’s solution was a radical localism. It’s more of that kind of thinking we need now.

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And if some serious thinking and debate is to take place, Scotland may be in a position to offer advice to England and Wales. Modern Scotland is the end result of an intense and inclusive debate that resulted in far-reaching constitutional change. Was that a factor in the decisive remain vote north of the border? Perhaps Scotland is a country more at ease with itself.

On a personal level, I noticed a few other things during the referendum. Mixing with politicians who I usually see only on the TV, I can confirm that the political world is indeed largely one big boys’ club. And it’s for a very specific type of boy, at that.

I’m also glad to see that the media has finally picked up on racist incidents in this country, and I hope they won’t go back to ignoring them again later. These things too will need to be factored into the debate if we want to repair this country. That process needs to begin urgently: if it doesn’t, I fear we will crash into the buffers again. And next time it’s likely to be far worse, and far uglier.