If, as seems likely, the prime minister’s Brexit deal is rejected in parliament on Tuesday, it is arguably only the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who stands in the way of a second referendum. If he moves a no-confidence vote and it fails, Labour has already at its conference mandated that the party seek a second referendum. And given that there is no majority in parliament for any currently envisaged version of Brexit, including no deal, it is entirely plausible that the current Brexit stasis could indeed be eventually “settled” by another referendum.

So what would those who wish Britain to stay in the EU need to do differently to win it? Recent tracker polls have shown an increasing swing to remain, with the highest scores for “Britain was wrong to leave the EU” being recorded in the last two months. But the long-term trends show that few voters are switching (remain’s ranks are being swelled by new younger voters joining the electorate and their elders leaving it). If anything, positions may have hardened and polarised further.

The argument to be made is that Britain has to be in Europe to maintain our status as a leading world power

In the event of a second referendum, it will all be down to turnout and who can best activate their base – and that still looks like leave. For example, the older you are, the more likely you were to vote for Brexit. In the 2016 referendum, while 64% of those under 25 voted (and 70% of those voted to remain), 74% of the 55-to-64s went to the polls as did 90% of those aged over 65.

Leave’s hand could be further strengthened by the widespread sense of voters being thwarted by the establishment, it could reiterate the “take back control” mantra, given it will have been so clearly lost to the EU and the Westminster “remain elite”. And leavers could run their own version of “project fear” about the social consequences of “overturning the vote” of 2016.

Meanwhile, remain risks looking miserably inept by recycling yet again a negative narrative about the economic cost of leaving the EU. Inexplicably, it has still not given or offered a positive patriotic account as to why Britain needs to stay in the EU, and how we could use Europe as a platform for the enduring influence of Britain on the world. After all, soft power surveys regularly place the UK as the first or second most powerful country in the world, and hard power rankings rightly argue that Britain remains a global power, while China is in effect still regional.

Neither side has talked about how Brexit might deliver for the people who voted for it.

Almost unfailingly, most leading Brexiteers are libertarians who will open up Britain even more to the globalised free market. Yet they seem wholly unaware that their Brexit electorate voted first for cultural, and second for economic, security. Whereas what Brexiteers offer exposes Britain to more migration from those countries that are further than European nations from the value system that Britain exemplifies: a situation that will arguably leave Britain open to the arrival of what some Brexit voters fear are hostile minorities. Similarly, the economic offer of Brexiteers threatens to make working lives even more insecure, as this is what globalisation has clearly done for lower- and middle-income groups in the developed western world.

Yet remain continues to offer a simple return to the pre-referendum status quo – one that has inordinately benefited upper-middle-class liberals, while rendering everyone else’s lives more insecure. Remainers have yet to offer any account as to how being in Europe will serve the interests of the poor and the middling. The liberal order, which has benefitted a self-serving cadre, is now discredited, and the message of both the referendum vote in the UK and populism in general, is that we have to care at a grand scale for all of our nation.

To be assured of winning a second referendum, remain would have to appeal to leave voters to switch. This it can only do by forming a story of how Britain in Europe can serve the values and beliefs of leavers as well as increasing their economic capacity and security. Nationalism appeals because it is a collective expression of solidarity, that we as a group will look after our own. It is an integral part of the identity of any community that membership of it confers advantages and benefits rather than vulnerabilities and exposure.

Those who voted to leave (as opposed to those who urged them to do so) are largely patriotic social conservatives who are also economically insecure and deeply concerned about the fate of their families and communities. The argument to be made to them is that Britain has always divided Europe in order to conquer the world, but now we have to join with Europe in order to maintain Britain as a leading world power and to defend the west from its enemies (something we can’t do and never have done alone).

In addition, by about 2050 Britain will have the largest population in Europe and, according to pre-Brexit economic trends (which can be restored) it will have the largest economy as well. In Europe this means the UK will be the largest player in a system where that has huge advantages, even if we are not members of the euro. We can in no small measure govern the Europe to come.

How? Well, Europe is changing, its federalist direction of travel is being questioned by an increasing number of European nations. Angela Merkel is constrained and her departure already announced, Emmanuel Macron is humbled, and the gilets jaunes protests are only the latest sign of the unpopularity of his liberal agenda. Italy, Poland and Hungary have all voted in parties that have challenged a commission-driven Europe and are calling for a return to a Europe of nations. The European elections in May 2019 are likely to continue this trend. In short, Europe is in the middle of changing gear. Why would we leave a Europe that is starting to return to a vision which is closer to that of many of those who voted for Brexit?

The world is retreating from an era of internationalism and dividing into aggressive and competing trading blocks, China is a clear threat to western values and arguably the US is retreating from them as well. Europe is the last and greatest redoubt of the western tradition of what George Orwell called “common decency”, and it desperately needs us to help defend and extol it. British graveyards are scattered across the continent, and British people fought for a Europe that upheld the west of Plato, Jesus and the Enlightenment. Would Brexit not be a betrayal of their sacrifice?

As unpalatable or as difficult as it may seem, remain has to construct a new “post-liberal” narrative based around the needs of those who have lost out under the liberal regime and saw EU exit as the answer. People are retreating into nationalism because the globalism argued for has only made them more economically and culturally insecure. Unless or until remain can show how Europe and being in Europe can better support leavers and further the interests and prestige of Britain, remain would lose a second referendum.

• Phillip Blond is the director of the ResPublica thinktank, and the author of Red Tory: How the Left and Right Have Broken the System and How We Can Fix It