Although I find some of the regular features of Andrew Neill’s Daily Politics cringe-making, I am bound to observe that during the election, he has at least both challenged politicians to act normally (as opposed to like evasive robots) and tried manfully to get the issues back to the forefront of what has been – for all its excitement – a braindead campaign in terms of serious debate about important stuff.

As one guest said today, the UK’s deficit is “not the elephant in the room, because this elephant can’t even get in the room”. So Neill had Polly Toynbee (Leftie) and Nick Ferrari (Rightie) in talking about the £40 billion of cuts that dare not speak their names.

During this part of the programme, Toynbee (a journalist I really admire) admitted that the scale of deficit repayment by the Government wasn’t being honestly discussed by any of the Parties, but bizarrely asserted, “no Party is going to do that because it’s politically impossible”.

This struck me as one of those terms like ‘professional foul’ – unconsciously cynical in a matter-of-fact sort of way. It also made me want to ask why her employer The Guardian continues to write deliberately misleading drivel about the taxpayer ‘making a profit’ because the banks’ share prices have gone up. And, while I was there transported magically through the screen and into the studio, to ask why she is a principled journalists wasn’t bashing out articles every day demanding that everyone tell voters the truth.

Without especially picking her up on this, Ferrari memorably observed, “we are being preached at, but never answered”. I thought that right on the money. More logically this time, Toynbee butted in to add that “we are all to blame”.

Personally, I don’t buy into the ‘we’ bit of that argument. The lowest common voter and anchor-man may be to blame – but I’m not, and nor are the majority of my friends. The people to blame are the politicians whose hubris-fuelled lack of due diligence got us into this mess in the first place; the hacks writing moronic piffle about footballers and soap stars; and those too busy gawping at the soap stars and the stories about the footballers to take our financial predicament seriously.

I’ll very happily blame clowns like Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, the writers on Eastenders, Paul Dacre and the editor of Heat magazine – but not Jeremy Paxman, Ian Hislop, Perry Worsthorne, Minette Marrin, Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neill and a host of others whose writings disprove the dissembling ‘nobody could’ve foreseen’ propaganda trotted out by those who should’ve foreseen, and yet – despite being paid so to do – didn’t.