Preston, Worksop, Rochdale, Morecambe. The flags draped all over Moscow on Tuesday were like a gazetteer of a particular slice of England. Not London, Manchester, Liverpool, but smaller urban centres. Watch the footage of England’s one and only World Cup win, in 1966, and one of the striking features is that the flags being waved by the cheering supporters were union jacks. Over the decades they have been replaced by flags bearing the cross of St George and a geographical designation, often from the parts of the country that are a long way away – both physically and culturally – from the capital.

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In sporting terms, this doesn’t signify much. Politically, though, it’s fascinating because the smaller, less fashionable towns of Britain are going to be crucial in deciding who wins the next general election. Jeremy Corbyn can’t win unless he does so in the sort of places represented in Moscow. These, though, are precisely the parts of England where Labour is doing badly.

Opinion polls suggest that the Conservatives have a small lead over Labour, which is remarkable given that Theresa May presides over a shambolic government, is making a complete Horlicks of the Brexit negotiations, and, as things stand, will go down in history as the worst prime minister of the postwar era.

Put simply, Labour should be streets ahead in the opinion polls – and would be, if the only people who could vote were young graduates living in university towns and large cities. But Labour needs a broader coalition to win an election, and it is increasingly being deserted by one part of the coalition that has historically won it parliamentary majorities – working-class voters living in the less glitzy parts of the country. This has not happened overnight. There have been signs of a drift away from Labour among working-class voters since the middle of the last decade, but the seriousness of the problem only really became evident in the 2017 election, when Corbyn’s strong performance was marred by the loss of seats in places that would once have been considered rock solid: Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent, Mansfield.

As a report from the Policy Network thinktank showed, this is not simply a matter of poverty. Labour under Corbyn has done well among those on the very lowest incomes and in the most deprived parts of the country, which tend to be inner-city seats. It has done far less well in seats that are both suffering from deprivation and where economic decline has been the most pronounced. “Labour’s fortunes have declined most in areas – typically post-industrial towns – that have not experienced recovery since the 2008 crash, and in some cases have never really recovered since the decline of the 1970s and 1980s, failing to provide new and quality job opportunities. It has improved most in inner cities that, despite still exhibiting high levels of poverty, deprivation and inequality, are on the up and connected to the global economy.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Film of England’s World Cup victory in 1966 – surrounded by union jacks

Labour’s control over the big cities outside of Scotland means it has to look elsewhere for gains at the next election. Of Corbyn’s top 100 target seats, 63 are in England, of which 49 are “town” constituencies, where recent performance – in both the 2017 general election and the 2018 local government elections – has been poor. Combating this political trend is not going to be easy, and can begin only once Labour accepts that it can’t win if white, working-class voters desert the party. Some Labour MPs – especially the ones representing northern seats – get this. In her recent pamphlet Rachel Reeves, the Leeds West MP, says that remain supporters (of whom she is one) have to understand that the one-third of Labour voters who backed leave did so as an “expression of deep anger at the way the governing class had ignored them and belittled their concerns about their national culture and identity”.

She is spot on about this. Labour’s affluent, liberal, middle-class wing tends to find the displays of patriotism during World Cups disturbing, even a tad repellent. As good global citizens and staunch opponents of nationalism they would never dream of driving around with an England flag on their car or draping one out of their bedroom window. They are fond of other countries but not their own.

Labour’s affluent, liberal wing tends to find displays of patriotism in ​World ​​Cups disturbing, even a tad repellent

But, as George Orwell once said, you can be a patriot without being a nationalist. Patriots think the country they live in is the best in the world but have no wish to force it on others. Nationalism, he said, was inseparable from the lust for power. Orwell was writing at a time when Labour was part of the wartime coalition, and the voters who would eventually make Clement Attlee prime minister were in uniform or doing their bit on the home front. These were patriotic radicals who saw themselves as fighting on two fronts: to win the war, and to bring about structural change in the way that Britain was run.

Corbyn has a radical agenda too, but he won’t get the chance to implement it while voters in target seats feel despised for loving their country. That simply breeds distrust, and fosters the belief that Labour’s middle-class, white-collar wing is more interested in reforming lifestyles of which it disapproves than it is in reforming capitalism. Telling someone with a low-paid, insecure job in a town hollowed out by globalisation that the answer to their problems is a sugar tax, mandatory parenting classes and drinking less has its limitations as a vote-winning strategy.

It is quite remarkable, given the role played by Thatcherism in closing the mines and the factories of the Midlands and the north, that May is picking up support in towns such as Mansfield. That, though, reflects the fact that deindustrialisation continued under Labour between 1997 and 2010. It also reflects a sense of abandonment by many erstwhile voters in the struggling parts of Britain. Labour’s historic mission was to use the power of the state to empower working people, not to use the power of the state to control their lives. The party would do well to remember that before it loses millions of votes for ever.

• Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist