Rather amazingly the 2010 election is being fought over one big issue, and no-one wants to talk about it. The perilous state of the UK’s public finances, and the increasingly urgent need to set the British economy back onto a genuinely sustainable path, is the issue that dare not speak its name.
Absolutely everyone knows that whichever party (or parties, if some kind of coalition arrangement is the end result) forms the next government, they will have to move decisively to curb public spending and increase taxation (See Ireland, see Greece). In the meantime, the showbiz "best of 3" debates are hogging the limelight, and even within the "debates" themselves, for obvious political reasons, this issue has been expertly dodged by all concerned.
Financial markets are, so far, giving the politicians the benefit of the doubt, accepting that in the run up to an election, political expediency will trump economic necessity. However, it is unlikely that they will be so forgiving from election day onwards. The 2009/10 budget deficit was £163.4bn (I'm sure that is still a lot of money) which means that the tax/spending mismatch as a percentage of GDP has quadrupled over the past two years. It can't go on, and rest assured the markets will give a decisive verdict if the politicans don't.