SO, the General Election has finally been called and the great issues of the day will be thrashed out on soapboxes and in television studios before D-Day on May 6.

Well, not quite. Here are seven controversies our political leaders will duck and dive to avoid over the next month, because they are simply too difficult to confront.

Elderly people are being condemned to the misery of selling their homes to fund residential care.

THE Tories, disgracefully, killed off the only viable solution to this scandal – a levy on all estates – by branding it a “death tax”. Gordon Brown, depressingly, bottled making the levy an election pledge, leaving home-owning elderly people with nowhere to turn to avoid an estate agent’s board when they move into care.

No party has a clue how to put an end to child poverty:

THE Conservatives matched Tony Blair’s landmark promise to end child poverty by 2020, but – for all their talk of “Broken Britain” – have no policies that could achieve it. Labour made big strides in its early years, when billions were thrown at tax credits and higher child benefit. No one thinks those billions will be available in the years to come.

Sooner, or later, the war in Afghanistan will end in failure.

THE conflict has already raged for longer than the Second World War and still the British casualties keep mounting. President Obama will be bringing his troops home from next year and our soldiers will quickly follow.

Does anyone think the Taliban will be defeated by then – or that Hamid Karzai will end the crippling corruption in Kabul?

Now would be a great time to join the Euro.

GORDON BROWN called it right to keep the pound when it was hideously overvalued and our economy was out of sync with the rest of the EU – but that was then. Now, if we truly face Greek-style bankruptcy because we cannot pay our terrifying debts, why not grab the protection of a strong currency – and at a favourable rate for exports? The issue no one will mention.

Taxes, not spending cuts, could plug the budget deficit.

THE conspiracy of silence I remarked on last week – that taxes can go up, as well as down, and anything is a better than Thatcher-style spending savagery. Unfortunately, since the Iron Lady, promising tax rises has been political poison, as the row over Labour’s national insurance hike may already be showing.

We need house prices to keep falling for years.

MUCH of the Brown boom was built on the mirage of derivatives trading and soaring property prices – leaving a generation of young people reluctant to start a family, because they cannot afford a nest for the children.

Even in the North-East, the average home costs five times the typical salary. But don’t expect any calls for prices to fall – nothing creates a “feelgood factor” like house prices on the up.

Often, it is the voters who are selfish and ignorant.

NOT you, obviously – you are reading a quality newspaper. But have some sympathy for our unpopular politicians, meeting voters who take little interest in the issues – then condemn them for being “all the same”.

Worse, they demand that impossible mix of low taxes and fantastic public services.

Enjoy the campaign!