I knew when I took my teenager to see Pride at the weekend that I would have some explaining to do. Pride is a film about how lesbian and gay people supported the miners during the 1984-85 strike. The film could have been a load of sentimental tosh but thankfully it isn’t. It glints with insight and is moving. Because people supporting others in times of struggle, despite their differences, is always moving. It made me think of solidarity but also how alliances come and go, and can be temporary. Leftwing politics is often as dull as monogamy. It is always good to be reminded of the value of political promiscuity.

That time was a lot like that. Friends collected around the corner from my London home, outside Gay’s The Word bookshop, and bussed themselves to Wales, where they gave of themselves generously to the miners. In more ways than one. There was homophobia, there were fights, but they weren’t the first gays in the village.

But what I had to explain to my youngest was what England’s last civil war was about, what unions are for, and even what coal actually is. Things have changed all right – we now buy a third of our coal from Russia – but the repercussions from that time continue to be felt.

What is happening now in Scotland can be traced back to Thatcher. Her agenda has continued to dominate British politics, via New Labour and the coalition. Scotland broke away psychically a long time ago. And while we keep being told about the family of nations, Scotland has long been an embarrassing relation. It eats too many pies and fried Mars Bars, and snacks on heroin. We have all seen the life-expectancy figures and shrugged at them, as though poverty was a peculiarly Scots version of self-harm. Where was the solidarity to be forged out of this?

Surely the spectacular failure of Labour to be on the right side of the independence debate is because of the shattering of class solidarity. Once, a worker in Liverpool could identity with a worker on Clydeside. There was a common enemy: it was Thatcher and what Simon Heffer calls her “radical economic reforms”. The miners paid the price. So did Scotland.

Now we are misty-eyed about those times, but the innate conservatism of parts of the left has blinded it to what is happening now. Here is a young and politically engaged population. Here are people with some skin in the game. Here, a massive turnout is likely. Here, change will happen, and here is a vote that matters.

The left should be here too, to make a new alliance with those who want to shake things up. Instead, all the parties are lined up together: the political elite is a parade of missionaries and apologists for the financial industry, which is having a strop about the notion of self-governance. Of course they are! So Labour is lined up with those who represent the past, not the young people who are risking their future.

The language of the no camp – Westminster, bankers, Farage, Prescott, the Orangemen and Henry Kissinger – is innately patronising. Do not give in to petty nationalism, they say. Just stick with the bigger unionist nationalism; it’s better for you.

The refusal of the left to countenance nationalist feeling in England has not made it go away; it erupts everywhere, from the EDL to Ukip. It is very English to think in our superior way that we don’t have such base instincts. Yet globally we have seen that if you destroy class solidarity all kinds of nationalism come to the fore. Indeed the last few years have seemed to me little but hugely stage-managed displays of bog-standard royal malarkey. The Etonian confidence of our rulers, who use Scotland as a game park, is always paternalistic. I cannot read any more lists of great men that should make me feel proud of the union.

The point is, Scotland can flourish as an independent nation, and so can England if this is what is chosen. But we will have to have a written constitution instead of being palmed off with some royal pageantry. Sure, that frightens the Queen’s horses. But no one has died.

At last politicians have got what they say they want: debate, packed meetings, participation. Their reaction? A day trip out of Westminster. All this time, electorates have been chided for apathy because many felt voting didn’t count and that all politicians were the same. Watching Brown deliver Cameron’s message, or Miliband tell us that voting for the status quo is about equality, is gobsmacking. But given the chance to vote on something significant, look at the shockwaves.

Those running the show read the runes all wrong. Suddenly, they are now to “give” some power away. They are going to do “emotion”. They really cannot see themselves as others see them.

Out of the division, Scotland will see alliances form and break. That is what happens. They will form across borders and parties. There will be flings. Cameron’s heart will be broken? Maybe. But Scotland has made England’s heart beat faster. The lectures are designed to stop that. True independence means deciding about your own taxes, your own borrowing, the direction of your economic policy. Like grownups. The continued infantilisation of Scotland would leave neither Scotland nor England satisfied. Those in charge are all campaigning simply to be in charge. There they all are, emoting about tartan paint.

Instead, let natural alliances flow and ebb. Let people have flings with new ways of doing politics. That’s where the passion is. Let England shake.