There is no rule that says people have to be interested in the things politicians want them to care about. For years, Eurosceptics got that wrong. Most British citizens went about their lives unbothered by the European Union. Brussels was an object of compulsive loathing for only a tiny number. Their good fortune was to find in David Cameron a malleable prime minister who could be pressed into calling a referendum on a question few voters had ever thought to ask themselves. The cranks got their hobby horse into the political Grand National – and, credit where it’s due, they won.

That campaign raised the volume of EU debate without making the topic more appealing. June 2016 was when Britain’s collective receptiveness to European arguments peaked. A question was asked; an answer was given: leave. How to make it happen was someone else’s problem.

Disengagement is the biggest obstacle to the cause of reversing Brexit. Now unrepentant remainers also come across as cranks, banging on about Europe in ways that cause agnostic eyes to glaze over. I have seen research in this area for one pro-European campaign group, and it is a rebuke to anyone who follows each twist of the negotiations, each barrage in the Tory civil war, and imagines that the nation is gripped.

Why is Theresa May silent instead of defending her Chequers Brexit plan? | Henry Newman Read more

“I don’t think I’ve heard anything about Brexit since the vote itself,” one young voter declares in a focus group. The participants were selected for readiness to switch between leave and remain positions. Many recall the 2016 campaign as a time of anxiety, even trauma. They resented being forced to choose between options they felt ill-equipped to evaluate, and are in no hurry to relive the experience. Few see Brexit as an imminent personal threat. It is either something settled in the past or whose meaning will be revealed in the far future.

MPs report much the same from their constituencies. The most common EU-related instruction since the referendum has been “just get on with it”. But public opinion is never settled. Polls suggest increasing support for another referendum, and remain is ahead of leave among those who express a preference. Growing support among trade unions for a ballot on final Brexit terms has the potential to shift the political centre of gravity. But 60% of all voters still agree with the statement: “I no longer care how or when we leave the EU, I just want it over and done with.”

With that audience lies Theresa May’s hope of survival. Her Chequers plan is floating motionless in the North Sea, shot down by EU officials and Tory backbenchers. Negotiations in Brussels are not going well and time is short. To get a sane, workable deal, the prime minister must make compromises that would outrage her party’s hardliners. And there is no majority in parliament for the kind of wild Brexit that those same hardliners could cheer. The walls are closing in, winter is coming, it has been an epic journey and tension is building ahead of the season finale …

But that is a Westminster show and most people haven’t been watching. They will only tune in when there is a deal. Then Downing Street has one powerful argument: back this offer and Brexit is done; you don’t need to read the small print (which is boring), you just need to know that this is our chance to move on. This is closure.

Many Tory MPs will embrace that message with enthusiasm. Some Labour MPs will also see the attraction, but not enough to lend votes to a Conservative government at its moment of maximum peril. Meanwhile, Tory hardliners will denounce the deal as submission to foreign powers. Neville Chamberlain’s paper-waving return from Munich will be invoked early and often.

The Lib Dems’ ‘momentum’ plan looks like another failed opportunity | Martha Gill Read more

Then it is a numbers game: can May muster enough MPs for a just-get-on-with-it Brexit bodge to outweigh the combined forces of stoppers and wreckers? And if not, what happens? That is where those running the campaign for a People’s Vote see their window. They anticipate a moment where three streams flow together: the public has re-engaged with Brexit because there is a deal; MPs say it is a bad deal; no one has a better idea. Giving the people the option to call the whole thing off then looks not only feasible, but unavoidable.

That is only a route map to keeping EU membership in play, not a strategy for winning the ensuing argument. The remain flame has been sustained by a coalition of pro-European idealists, who see themselves holding the line against a xenophobic putsch, and managerial pragmatists, who lament a reckless act of economic and strategic self-sabotage. Those positions have not changed in the 27 months since the referendum, which is a long time for people who thought the argument was over. There might be more evidence now to support the case against Brexit. It is plainly not the thing it was advertised to be. But remainers have not got noticeably better at marshalling the facts on their side for mass persuasion.

Political warfare over EU relations has raged unabated within already politicised circles and it is hard for the combatants to grasp that it has all just been shadow-boxing. They have only been warming up for the big fight. Remainers have spent a lot of energy arguing with people who believe in Brexit, whose passion for it mirrors their hatred, because those are the only people who can be bothered to argue back. The moment is approaching when they will meet a tougher challenge: that sea of people beyond Westminster who neither love nor hate the EU, who had no strong feelings about membership before they were asked in 2016 and have none now, except perhaps a yearning to get the question out of their lives.

The simplest way to achieve that has generally been to have faith that some kind of deal – any deal – will be done, and not bother with the details. But if the deal comes back a dud, or there is no deal at all, the calculus changes. If Brexit starts to look like a gruelling odyssey, dragging on for years, with real costs now and long into the future, the case for calling it off can be made – and won. But that argument hasn’t properly started yet. It is possible that all of the ideological and technical squabbling, the factional bickering that has consumed politics since the referendum, will turn out to have been only the preamble. And what it will all come down to in the end is a contest between two gut propositions that have very little to do with the EU. For leave: just get on with it. For remain: please just make it stop.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist