Between them, the parties have focused on austerity, whilst promising to boost funding for the NHS and cut taxes. Clearly, the only way this can happen is with a significant increase in revenues flowing into the Treasury.
So that means more jobs are needed and companies need to grow sales. The Tories believe they will enable another 2million jobs to be created. But what are those jobs? Over the last five years, the need to rebalance the economy has crept closer to the top of the agenda. The realisation is the service economy is built on somewhat shaky foundations. A better solution is to revitalise UK manufacturing. But which party said anything about that during the campaign?
Yet the parties did have some interesting promises hidden in the noise. You'd have been hard pressed to know the Tories were looking to reform the education system for the next generation of scientists and engineers, whatever that means, or that Labour was looking to implement a long term funding framework for science and innovation or that Liberal Democrats aimed to double innovation and research spending.
During the campaign, PM David Cameron talked up his commitment to apprenticeships, while Labour accused him of presiding over a fall in the number of apprenticeships.
All noises off, perhaps. But are we about to see another missed opportunity when it comes to addressing the fundamental problems, such as the shortage of skilled engineers?
As I said in my last editorial, it would have been refreshing to hear from the parties just how they were focused on the future and quite what they intended to do to encourage new technologies and manufacturing to thrive in the UK. But, with the election now behind us, perhaps it's better that they have talked so little about the needs of manufacturing and science.
Whoever forms the next Government, hopefully we'll be in for a period of under-promising and over delivery, rather than the opposite, that has typified Governments of all colours over the last 25 years.
