Paul Mason: The Progressive Majority Can Rescue Us from the Brink of Brexit Chaos

First came the speeches. Large middle-aged men with shaven heads, MPs with northern accents, the rhetoric of class. This was the labour movement's first official rally outside Parliament since Boris Johnson tried to shut it down.

Then, after an hour or so, came the flares. Three young women in cycle masks and multi-coloured hair, plus a lad with a can of lager and a green smoke flare in his hand, stepped into the road – and the entire crowd followed them.

Within minutes, around 5,000 people were striding down Millbank in an impromptu march, headed by a samba band, that would take them over the River Thames and back to Big Ben, just in time to witness the collapse of Boris Johnson's government.

The collapse of that government is a big deal. But so was what happened on the demo. In TV news reports, unruly marches are great for video editors – they provide much needed colour while one drab politician after another is interviewed. But they're not seen as interesting in themselves.

However, for those who care to look, something significant has happened during the seven days of protest that Johnson triggered last week.

We've stolen the mantle of insurgency off the Brexiteers. They were supposed to be the anti-establishment rebellion – but now it's us. Plus, we've actually created a movement in which fanatical Europhiles from the shires can stand, albeit scratchily, alongside London Tube drivers who voted Brexit. And we've given MPs who have to resist Johnson's coup huge confidence.

If you look at the map of the 193 protests staged across Britain in the past week, you'll see a whole swathe of middle Britain where nothing happened. In the small towns of the English Midlands, the fishing ports of Humberside and the former mining valleys of South Wales, people have watched all this on TV, often believing the tabloid lies and the conspiracies posted in their Facebook groups, that this is all a plot by "luvvies" to steal Brexit.

In reality, this is no longer about Brexit. It's about democracy. It's about a very clear choice being thrust into our faces not by Johnson, but by Donald Trump. We can leave Europe without a deal, suffer food, medicine and petrol shortages, and – as the stockpile of body bags gets used up – do a swift trade deal with the USA, which hands our NHS, our agriculture and our food standards over to American control. Or we can face towards Europe.

For me, the form in which we end up facing Europe no longer matters. I'd prefer a second referendum, in which we vote to Remain in Europe and transform it. But I would settle for membership of the single market, keeping freedom of movement and, yes, swapping some sovereignty for some market access.

Because the alternative is a nightmare. Scotland would vote to leave the Union, as is its right, and there would then be not just a customs border north of the River Tweed, but two economies with completely different rules and standards.

How did it happen that, in the space of three years, we tore our democracy apart, splitting our society into two camps whose extremes hate each other?

For the answer, observe Jacob Rees-Mogg draped like some languid aristocrat in Babylon Berlin across three spaces on the benches of Parliament: too posh to participate in a basic human interchange over the future of this country. He's relaxed because he's said to have made £7 million from the falling value of the pound since Brexit.

Mogg represents the outbreak of a clear factional struggle inside the British elite. On the one side, there are the real businesses – the aircraft and car manufacturers, the service giants and supermarkets – who want the least disorder and the strongest links with Europe. On the other side are the hedge-fund managers and the fracking bosses who back Mogg and Johnson. What they need is chaos.

The more chaotic the outcome of Brexit, the more rules get broken, the more fragmented our democratic institutions become, and the redder the faces of the angry old racists on Question Time turn. And if the pound slumps to its lowest value in 35 years, and house prices collapse, that's no problem for a hedge fund: you can always trade volatility and scoop up a few hundred bankrupt buy-to-let properties, in a town you have never visited, for petty cash.

Brexit has become a tool for eviscerating our democracy. I wish we could "get it over with", but if we did that would just be the start – of a culture war between xenophobes and globalists, and a humiliating trade negotiation process that would see Britain surrender either to Trump, or eventually, to the EU.

It looks like we're going to need an election to sort this out, triggering all the party rivalries that have been suppressed for the past seven days. This time the issue won't be about Corbyn and his radical left economic policies: the choice will be a progressive government or a racist government.

Labour, because of its crass position on independence, looks likely to be wiped out in Scotland, along with the Tories. Even if Labour can scrape a small majority elsewhere, taking seats as divergent as Hastings and Stoke-on-Trent, for the government to represent the whole of Britain, the SNP will have to be in it.

That government would need to stabilise our democracy, hold a second Brexit referendum and end austerity. It would be a government hostile to wars of all kinds, and committed to social justice. If it was backed by the energy we've seen on the streets it could clear the poisoned atmosphere of this country.

But if the progressive majority of Britain decide to fight each other for five weeks, that will hand our society over to the speculators and the racists.

@paulmasonnews