How are you framing it in your applications? Could you make it look more like a period as a research assistant rather than an aborted PhD? My sense would be that the less you bring the word PhD up, the less others will. Perhaps go for a skills-based cv rather than an academic achievements based one?

I suspect it's realistic rather than pessimistic. There's quite a few surveys that suggest PhD students do not have a realistic picture of what the job is like (or the job market), so I think it's a useful set of resources.

I know from historian colleagues that the market in that subject is very tough so I think you're right to think that stepping straight into a lectureship or a postdoc is the exception not the rule. And many people never get there even if they pick up p/t teaching for years. I think there are several things that might be worth you thinking about.
How geographically mobile are you? The less you can move, the fewer possible institutions you can work for and so the chances of it working out diminish.
How prepared are you to work at institutions very different to the one you are at? For the majority of institutions in this country, teaching and admin form a large part of the day to day role in the humanities, research can get sidelined. And students will be much less well-prepared than you are used to if you have studied at elite institutions.
Being a lecturer is very different from dong a PhD or a postdoc, and for some people the admin side comes as an unpleasant shock. Would you relish running a degree programme or acting as the departmental main point of call for students in difficulties? Or is that wholly unappealing?
Here's a resource that I personally think is very useful on academic careers and whether it's the right choice:

These sorts of activities are useful in terms of socialisation. Once you've got a bit of experience locally, you might want to consider getting involved in the postgraduate / early career network of a professional association in your field. That's the sort of thing that is both useful in network building and getting your name known in your profession, but also sends signals that you're collegiate on your cv, which is definitely a good thing in my experience.

From your last paragraph, I think you'd hate academia. The actual job is very different to a PhD and if you're entrepreneurial you'd find the admin side frustrating.

It's also Canada not England. Rules may differ...

What PM133 says. I would require the faculty head's approval if you'd failed previously and he normally says no. Only a very clear reason why you failed eg illness and why that no longer applies would convince him.

Check what your contract / studentship agreement says. If it says you need to repay then you might want to get legal advice on the consequences if you don't - this is how major debt problems can start.

No problem the ESRC (your RC) funds +3 or 1+3 PhDs (and other variations). I'd ask your dept for advice whether LLM or MRes is better prep for a PhD funding application though.

Did you fail and resit any modules? If so, those marks get capped at a bare pass unless they accepted extenuating circumstances. That could explain a discrepancy. Otherwise ask the programme director why.

If I understand the issue correctly they fall into different visa categories. Postdocs seem to be able to get J1 visas whereas a lab manager would be H1B, which is the category that Trump's cracked down on to decrease immigration. I've heard even the likes of Facebook are struggling to get that type and there are I think costs for the employer, so not worth it to employ a foreign applicant when there are qualified US citizens. Similar to the situation in the UK really, so we can't complain.

It is certainly possible to gain a PhD in Germany with minimal contact with the supervisor assuming you don't need access to any equipment. What I would question from the experience of friends who did just that, is whether it's worth it. The two people I know got nothing career wise from it, just the title. It seems that if you are not involved in the day-to-day activities of the 'Lehrstuhl' (I have no idea what this is in English sorry - there's no real equivalent), then you are very unlikely to benefit from the professor's patronage, which is crucial for getting academic jobs in Germany in my social science field at least. So maybe the question is why do you want to do a PhD?

Congratulations Hannah a) on surviving b) on clearly having such an interesting thesis that they could talk so long about it and c) on the good result! First, wait until you get the formal report - that should list exactly what changes need to be made. If you've got 3 months they will despite being labelled major be relatively limited. When you get the report, agree with your supervisor what you are going to do on each point and be incredibly systematic. Make a timetable, keep track of exactly where in the thesis you have addressed each point and just work through them. In some ways as they're broken down into chunks of work, it's easier to combine with a p/t job than writing a chapter from scratch. You can do this - one last push and you're there.

One minor point: if you need a tier 4 visa your travel plans may not be compatible with the monitoring measures used by universities to check visa compliance eg regular signing in and supervision meetings.

If I remember your previous posts, your first supervisor raised doubts about the original proposal and suggested alternatives so you changed supervisor, only to discover that someone had indeed already done your project and you are now struggling to come up with a new project? Is that right? If so, might it be worth swallowing your pride and thinking again about the alternatives the first supervisor suggested? I assume you are nearing the point where upgrade starts to become a problem, so maybe going with one of her ideas would at least mean it's likely to be a viable project and give you a decent chance of progression.