A conference on changing demographics I attended last week tackled the fact that, while we are living longer – a great product of medical innovation – many of us will also experience extended periods later in life with physical and mental decline, so requiring more health and social care than in the past. Yet falling birthrates mean there will be fewer working-age taxpayers, raising the question of how we foot the bill.

As I listened, the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ description of this general election campaign being “a conspiracy of silence” came to mind. Neither the Conservatives nor the Labour party are confronting voters with the tough fiscal choices facing the country. Further cuts on already underfunded public services are baked into spending plans accepted by both parties. To avoid them, either taxes or the national debt would have to rise in a context of high interest rates, unless the economy somehow starts booming. And so the election has inevitably ended up feeling a bit like a phoney war. Difficult decisions inevitably await a new government on 5 July, but we are none the wiser on exactly how they will play out.

While I’ve always had a vague sense that declining populations and ageing societies will mean that governments will face an unenviable fiscal crunch in a few decades, there’s nothing like talking about it for three days straight at a Ditchley Foundation conference to put contemporary political aversion to talking about trade-offs in context. And what awaits us could make today’s financial headaches........

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