As dramatic campaign closes, has it actually grappled with UK’s massive problems?

Before the campaign started there was a common expectation in Westminster circles that a campaign, where the principle actors were Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer might be, well, not exactly a thriller.

In fact, from Sunak’s D-day disaster, Farage’s stormy entrance into the campaign, ‘gamblegate’ and in the closing moments, Rishi Sunak perhaps more personal than he’s ever been, it has been anything but dull.

But I can’t help wondering if it’s really a campaign where we have seen our politicians grapple with the massive issues that affect us.

In the first part of the year, politicians were fond of talking about the dangers the world faces, but they haven’t chosen to make much of foreign affairs. The challenges and opportunities of technology they often love to talk about have been more or less absent too. What about how we care for our vulnerable and elderly with social care?

What about what seems to be a crisis taking place behind closed doors in our prisons? Climate change? The true scale of the country’s debts and what that really might mean in the years to come?

Of course, politicians match their campaigns to what is top of voters’ lists.

Campaign in poetry, govern in prose?

Perhaps more like: campaign on a few core issues that appeal to focus groups, and worry about some of the massive issues of governing a bit later on.

It is nearly over. Our political parties have been doing their best, or what passes for it, for more than a month to get you to back them. We’re nearly at that magic moment where it’s all of us in charge, not the politicians.

It’s not likely that any of the 2024 campaigns will go down as the most inspiring, dynamic, memorable political operations. I’m not so sure that the public would have been in the mood to be romanced and dazzled by any of them anyway after all the stresses and strains of the last few years.

But that doesn’t make our decisions in the next week any less important. The choice will affect us all.