As it is, whoever manages to scrape a majority in Parliament, the country is heading into a period of financial crisis that the politicians have ensured we are uniquely ill-prepared for. Since the beginning of the global recession, the British people have been cushioned. Because of its fear of looking bad before the election, the Labour government has continued to spend borrowed money like a drunk on borrowed time.

Cameron's first campaign poster of the year "We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS" demonstrated that the trend would continue. This election was being fought not on who could disentangle us from the terrible welfare-bankrupted state that we were in, but instead on who could most completely maintain the status quo that helped get us in this ruinous situation in the first place.

But another message was being given out more subtly with that campaign. After all, why ring-fence health spending and not education? Why health-spending and not defence? The impression given is that cuts will be made to things that people wouldn't miss anyway. And though there are certainly plenty of cuts that would not be felt — not least the £1 billion this government has spent on advertising with our money — the meaningful cuts will have to be felt. That means considerable cuts to front-line public services.

This would have been the time for a responsible opposition to be honest with the people — to explain that we are going to have to feel this recession if we are going to get through it. 

When the repercussions of all this kick in, the post-election realities the public will quite rightly feel that no one warned them that it was going to hurt. Taxpayers who thought their best security would be in property have little idea of what the effect will be when we finally see the collapse of the housing-price bubble that has been sustained over the last two years. We were given the impression all this could be done painlessly.

So which box do we tick? When I was at university there was always an option on the ballot for student-election posts to "Re-Open Nominations". "Ron", to which it was always shortened, was popular if the candidates were all rubbish. Unfortunately, we don't have "Ron" at this election. If we did, I suspect he would romp to victory.