London: "Brexit is the trailer," says political academic Matthew Goodwin. The main feature will begin after these messages.

It is now three months since Britain voted to leave the European Union, and the experts have had plenty of time to dig into opinion polls, slice the demographics, test hypotheses.

The consensus is scary. A new fault line is opening up in politics. The old left/right division is more meaningless than ever. A combination of social and economic forces is redefining politics, and the aftershocks will redraw the geopolitical map – not only in the United Kingdom and Europe but in much of the Western world.

Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent calls it the "values" divide. "On one side [people] are cosmopolitan, very open to globalisation, very open to free movement, migration. And on the other side are a more authoritarian, conservative group of voters who are profoundly resistant to change and feel as though their cultural identity is under threat."

The divide has long been there but now it has been politicised for the first time.

"That has been shown to be the case in lots of different countries. You can see it in the Trump phenomenon to some extent as well, and you can certainly see it in Austria and France and so on," Goodwin says.

"The [Brexit] referendum should be seen as merely opening a window through which we can see this deeper divide that's going to be with us for many years to come."

It's localism vs internationalism. It's conservatism vs liberalism. It's tearing old political parties apart: the UK government has suddenly mutated from anti-Brexit to pro-, the Labour party is a mess of ideals and egos.

Across Western democracies, new parties and unexpected party leaders are gaining ground. They have been described as "populists", though in fact they are politicians identifying with the new, rather than the old politics.

"The big story of the next 12, 14 months in European politics is going to be the rise of populism and the nationalist backlash to the EU," Goodwin says.

The shocked ceasefire that held on the continent since Brexit is crumbling, with its leading consensus figure Angela Merkel weakened by the rise of anti-immigrant populists in local elections.

In early October Hungary will hold a referendum on whether to reject EU migrant quotas, and prime minister Viktor Orban will likely try to use the result to pull sovereign powers back from Brussels.

The same month, Austria will rerun its extraordinary presidential election between a former Greens leader and an anti-immigrant Eurosceptic.

In March the Netherlands holds general elections. On current polling, Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (which wants to close the borders, close mosques and ban the Koran) is in the lead, even though Wilders will go on trial next month for inciting racial hatred. He wants the Netherlands to leave the EU.

Shortly after comes the French presidential election. On current polls the National Front's Marine Le Pen will make the head-to-head second round. "The time of the nation state is back," she told a recent rally, promising to defend French identity, restore national sovereignty, shut the borders and deport Islamists.

And then there is the German federal election – with Merkel's star on the wane and losing votes to the insurgent, Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany party.

"Fast-forward 18 months the only thing we're talking about will be the populist resurgence and what the EU can do at a moment when it looks as though Eurosceptics are pretty much everywhere bursting onto the national scene," says Goodwin.

"Brexit is the trailer for some of that. Exactly the same divides we've been talking about are going to play out in all of those contests."

So what are those divides?

Taking back control

If there was one moment of genius in the fact-starved, contradictory, anti-expert and ultimately successful Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum, it was the choice of a slogan: "Take Back Control."

"It tapped directly into that sense that actually in a global world we no longer have control," says Goodwin. "Not just about economics … not just wages jobs and housing. The control element is also about identity and having control in an era where you're facing multiple threats – whether from free movement, immigration, from Islam and the perceived threat that poses to cultural values.

"The EU became a manifestation of that threat so it galvanised this particular group of voters who said 'I'm going to go out and defend my national identity as I see it'."

The single biggest indicator of how someone voted was their level of education. People with no qualifications voted 75 per cent to leave. People with a postgraduate degree voted 27 per cent to leave.

Support for Brexit was about 30 points higher among those who only had GCSE level education or lower, than it was for people who held a degree.

"Education is absolutely central to this referendum vote and if you look at research in Europe it's absolutely central to Euroscepticism," Goodwin says. It was a much better Brexit determinant than, for example, income.

But there was also a clear divide in attitudes between those who voted to stay or leave. Those who believe immigration is bad voted 90 per cent to leave. Those who "feel very strongly English" voted 71 per cent to leave. If you agreed that "politicians don't care what people like me think" you were 70 per cent likely to turn out for Leave.

Brexiteers were much more likely to be against gender equality, against gay rights, for stiffer criminal sentences, for the death penalty.

"What's underpinning this is a much deeper value divide in Britain," saysGoodwin. "There is a value conflict going on that is going to be with us for some time."

Political scientist John Curtice agrees. "The European Union is primarily a liberal phenomenon," he says. "It promotes cosmopolitan values, it's about trying to bring separate national identities together. It encourages cultural intermingling, it encourages economic trade: these are classic liberal values.

"The link between education and social liberalism versus authoritarianism has long been evident. The crucial thing is that in British politics for the most part it has not been particularly politicised."

Alexander Stubb is a classic Euro-liberal: Finnish former adviser to the president of the European Commission, ex-MEP, former prime minister of Finland. He speaks five languages, has a diploma from the Sorbonne and a PhD from the London School of Economics (but he's not a total cliché: he's also the triathlete son of a professional ice hockey player).

Stubb is genuinely upset by the changes is Europe. He looks back 25 years when, he says "the world, especially the Western World, was full of hope".

The Cold War was over, the Velvet Revolution had taken place, within less than a decade the EU grew from 12 to 28 members. Liberal democracy was on the march.

"And here we are in 2016," he says. "A lot of the eastern and central European countries are turning to despots themselves. The same champions of freedom and liberal democracy that were fighting the system in the 1970s and 80s are now turning their backs against it and talking about an illiberal system.

"For all of us who believe in liberal democracy, market economy and globalisation it's not exactly a fun time to hang around."

Brexit should be a "wake-up call", a "smell the coffee moment", he says. And not just for Europe.

"Aristotle talked about the final stage of democracy being tyranny. Obviously one could say that the likes of Trump or Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage and many others are not necessarily the beacons of what we would see as liberal democracy."

He likes the way Thomas Friedman put it in a recent column for The New York Times: Web People versus Wall People.

"The primary focus of Wall People is finding a president who will turn off the fan [Friedman wrote] – the violent winds of change that are now buffeting every family – in their workplace, where machines are threatening white-collar and blue-collar jobs; in their neighbourhoods, where so many more immigrants of different religions, races and cultures are moving in; and globally, where super-empowered angry people are now killing innocents with disturbing regularity. They want a wall to stop it all.

"Wall People's desire to stop change may be unrealistic but, in fairness, it's not just about race and class. It is also about a yearning for community – about 'home' in the deepest sense – a feeling that the things that anchor us in the world and provide meaning are being swept away, and so they are looking for someone to stop that erosion."

Web people, on the other hand, have an instinct to "embrace the change in the pace of change and focus on empowering more people to be able to compete and collaborate in a world without walls. In particular, Web People understand that in times of rapid change, open systems are always more flexible, resilient and propulsive".

'Coming apart at the seams'

Libertarian political scientist Charles Murray has for several years been pushing a theory that white America is "coming apart at the seams".

In an interview with online current affairs magazine Spiked last month, Murray said progressive social forces have left casualties: angry, unemployed and disempowered young men who "spend their lives essentially playing video games".

"They are no longer participating in the major institutions of American society," Murray said. "To put it crudely, I think they look upon Trump as 'sticking it to the man' in a way they find gratifying. But I think they also look upon this as entertainment.

"Then you have other people in the white working class who are getting married, holding jobs, playing by the rules – and they are pissed as hell. They see all of those shenanigans among the elites, the Wall Street types … And most aggravating of all, they have to suffer the cognitive elite's incredible smugness and condescension. The elites don't even bother to hide this condescension towards the white working class."

Certainly in Europe, some politicians have decided that humility, rather than condescension, should be the byword.

This week the EU held an "informal" post-Brexit summit, in Bratislava. The UK was not invited.

EU president Donald Tusk emerged in a remorseful mood.

"We had a frank discussion about the root causes of the current political situation in Europe," he said. "The fact that millions of Europeans feel insecure is real. People are concerned about what they see as lack of control, and express fears over migration, terrorism and last but not least, about their economic and social future."

But Stubb says the liberal centre has been quiet for too long. He doesn't want to surrender his values in the face of a change in the political wind.

"We need to collectively think about ways of getting out of this mess," he says – meaning European leaders, but also more generally.

"We have a set of values that we believe in. They are liberal democracy, they are market economy and they are globalisation. They are equality, human rights and freedom. We need to find a collective way of defending those values."

He thinks centrist politicians have become too scared of criticism.

"When you get slaughtered enough times you get scared, and when you get scared you become silent, and when you become silent you let the extremes run the debate.

"And when the extremes run the debate you get Brexit, you get Trump, and the rest of it."