As referendum day looms closer, the “independence” debate lurches into deeper and deeper absurdities. 

This has nothing to do with a precise timetable for some sort of devo-max, or for an extra dip into “bag of sweets” bribery. 

Nor, even as the pound slides against the euro, does it have much to do with whether we share a currency. The big question everyone avoids is “what do we do about the English?”

Apart from football, I have precious little time for nationalisms. 

As a child in Bootle, I grew up with a clear understanding of the world. Liverpool was Bootle’s natural extension, Manchester our biggest suburb. Everything beyond was hinterland. 

For holidays we journeyed to foreign parts — Blackpool to the north, Rhyl to the south. The bravest among us even ventured into the wilds of Cumbria or Snowdonia. And the image of a genuinely foreign land was London.

Nationalism was almost an unfathomable concept. Our neighbours may have been Irish, Scottish, Caribbean, Chinese or eastern European, but we were all poor. 

We shared the same daily struggles and the same irreverent laughter. We differed mainly in that Scousers were mainly obsessed with the Everton/Liverpool question while newcomers supported foreign teams with more exotic names — Heart of Midlothian, Balleymena, Tottenham Hotspur.

What has this got to do with the referendum? Well, it strikes me that the Scots may have become the last defenders of the best of what I once believed to be British. 

Scotland still believes in “community,” decent homes for all, a universal right to good education and a free NHS. 

They think Trident is a bucket of shite and the Poll Tax an act of wicked vindictiveness. Proactively, they have also been investing in renewable energy as though they understand that this really is the future. 

The Scots still recognise that strength that is to be found in our interdependency, rather than running with the delusion that it is a sign of weakness. The problem is not the Scots but that, in the decades since my childhood, England has lost the plot.

While Scotland would rejoice in dumping the tax on spare bedrooms, Westminster is being bought by those obsessed with avoiding a tax on spare mansions. 

While Labour may promise to reverse this, Scottish voters know there are a few complications that stand in the way. 

First, Labour is the opposition not the government. Second, Labour’s record is that the gap between rich and poor was wider when we left office than when we came in. 

And third, once the dust has settled, it requires an act of faith to believe that Labour will cease to be the plaything of the south (and the City) that Blair turned it into.

So invisible ink will disguise the real questions facing Scottish voters in the polling stations. Can the English be saved? And are we worth the effort?

Many in Scotland know that a Yes vote would trigger a much bigger collapse. 

Faced with the prospects of a permanent Tory government, the Welsh may decide it is time to “up stumps” too. Richer English regions would then tire of poorer ones (or vice versa) and a politics of division and disintegration would become unstoppable. Long before then, everyone would have dumped the pound.

But trying to scare the Scots into remaining is not the answer. The only positive space is for one of the parties to come out openly and say the unsayable — it is English politics that has become the busted flush. Britain’s flirtation with free-market economics has collapsed into casinos and cartels. 

These now take the bulk of  Britain’s taxation within today’s “corporate” welfare state. 

E

nglish politics has fallen into the grip of a politics in which the poor bail out the rich. The escape route requires a much better “Better Together” deal for us all.

Across Britain, towns, cities and regions have to be given greater powers (and resources) to deliver solutions to their own problems. 

Along with these powers must come duties to meet their share of national climate change/environmental repair obligations. 

If we follow the continent, much of what has been privatised will be re-socialised (but in more open and accountable ways). Security, transparency and sustainability could become the cornerstones of a new British cohesion.

My guess is that, if the Scots believed this was on offer, this is what they would vote for. 

But the Scots won’t look to the Conservatives for such a promise. The Tories are now preoccupied with Ukip and are in hock to excess wealth. Moreover, their crazies are at the helm. Cameron would not survive a Yes vote. And “one nation” Conservatives are already the enemy within their own ranks.

The Lib Dems are no better placed. The few brave souls who speak out within their loveless coalition are but a marginalised rump. 

Most bow to the mantra that loyalty to the coalition agreement remains their strongest card. Few have the sense to heed Mark Twain’s warning that “loyalty to a petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

And Labour? 

Well, Labour promises a clear timetable, but for what? Wealth redistribution? Ending fuel poverty? Shifting into renewable energy? Bringing public utilities back into public ownership? Pursuing an economics that restores the planet rather than destroys it? 

If I were a Scot, these are the promises I would be looking for.

But I’m not. I’m just a kid from Bootle with a leftover sense of Britishness that seemed worth hanging on to. So I’m left with a plea. 

I know that Westminster politics has subtracted from any unifying sense of Britishness rather than added to it. 

I know that historically we always failed to learn from the best Scotland had to offer — from engineering skills and apprenticeships, to family courts and the treatment of juveniles in the justice system. 

But as Yozzer Hughes might have said, “Go on, gizza chance.”

With Scotland’s help, even the English can be better than we are today. 

At least I hope so.

Alan Simpson is a former Labour MP and environmental campaigner.