Gina Miller has launched a campaign to end the division and anxiety over Brexit with a new fact-checking website.

Launching the campaign in the leave heartland of Dover, Miller said she hoped the End the Chaos website and a series of nationwide events would act as a foil to the false claims and counter-claims that characterised the EU referendum in 2016.

Miller said her website would be open source and a transparent platform for local councils, business and academics who wanted to get their impact studies into the public domain.

“If it’s not getting into newspapers and not getting into government conversations it will be on our site and we will push it out very pro-actively,” she said.

Miller, who took the government to court over its authority to invoke article 50 and trigger the UK’s departure from the EU, said Brexit was poisoning the nation and people just wanted to hear “unspun” facts.

“We aim to provide a public service, a trusted source of information from which people can decide for themselves what they think and want for themselves and our country.”

She criticised the political infighting and other tensions arising from the debate. Having spent the last two months talking to people around the country, she said Brexit was “dividing and disfiguring our national life” and creating a sadness among voters of all political persuasions.

“This is not, surely, how it was meant to be? This is not what we want for ourselves or what we wish to bequeath to our children and grandchildren,” she said.

A finance industry professional, Miller successfully took the government to the supreme court to challenge its authority to leave the EU without a vote in parliament.

She recently ruled out formally going into politics after speculation that she might be interested in running to succeed Vince Cable as the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Miller told an audience of supporters in Dover town hall that it would be grotesque if the UK ended up disintegrating as an unintended consequence of Brexit, and she described the current state of affairs as resembling a “Brex-suicide”.

“What we have ended up with is a nation haunted by division, anxiety and unhappiness,” she said.

Miller said she hoped the campaign would provide the “light of transparency” by spreading impartial information that would “disinfect the poisonous and unproductive” Brexit debates the country was “sick of”.

With 196 days to go until the scheduled exit from the EU, Miller said every day the “glass runs emptier”, with political infighting preventing any settled vision of Britain’s future.

“There is a panic in the air, and time is fast running out,” she said. “Many Britons, irrespective of whether they voted leave or remain on 23 June 2016, are beginning to wonder how this journey will end. The reality is that no one truly understands what Brexit means for Britain.”

To the sound of March of the Saxons by the Warrington indie band Baltic Fleet, Miller launched her campaign in front of about 50 supporters in Dover, where 62.2% of voters opted to leave the EU.

She described the town as a beacon of Britain’s heritage and a vital lifeline for the economy, which was threatened with chaos in the event of a disorderly Brexit.

“Did Dover residents who voted leave realise the outcome of that decision could potentially leave them marooned in their homes for up to three months following our departure from the EU on 29 March next year?” she asked.

“Of course, they didn’t. Quite naturally, they believed they had voted to deliver a safer, more secure country – a more prosperous future for themselves and their families.”

Miller called on politicians to listen to the views of people “beyond zone two” of the London transport system.