Eddie Barnes: Don't be fooled, the election campaign is simply the calm before the reality of an economic storm

Nick Clegg and all his Lib Dem candidates signed pledges not to raise tuition fees, for example. David Cameron and Gordon Brown launched into protracted and entirely forgettable rows about the free bus pass. And all the while, I seem to recall civil servants wearily noting that "whoever wins in May" would find the most God-awful mess awaiting them once they passed through the door to No. 10.

Twelve months on, and north of the Border we are being treated to much the same spectacle.

With the SNP preparing to announce its manifesto tomorrow, we will have the full complement of policy pledges for the 5 May election.

The two main parties, the SNP and Labour, are locked in the usual bidding war of sexy election promises. Meanwhile, behind them, civic Scotland is waiting for the whole thing to pass so it can get on with the business of trying to deal with the cutbacks coming their way.

Yesterday, in these pages, former Edinburgh University principal Stewart Sutherland predicted some "very tough post-election bargaining" between universities and politicians over the funding crisis awaiting them.

Crawford Beveridge, the author of the Independent Budget Review – which last year set out some of the unpalatable medicine required over the coming few years – philosophically notes that he didn't really expect any of his proposals to get picked up until after May.

Meanwhile, squirreling away in the background, the Scottish Government's commission on dealing with the cuts, under the aegis of former STUC boss Campbell Christie, is quietly taking evidence and preparing its own medicine – all conveniently to be aired after May. True to form, none of the Commission's submissions or evidence, which is likely to have a far greater impact on the way Scotland is run than this week's manifestos, is being made public. Not until after the election, of course.

The easy thing to do here is to attack the politicians for all this hood-winking. But is it? As one of the more thoughtful politicians at Holyrood noted to me last week, how can parties such as Labour or the SNP really be expected to raise all this in an election campaign when they know the public itself isn't ready for it? Furthermore, Labour and the SNP are restricted by how much they can manoeuvre by the presence of the other.

When the SNP publishes its manifesto tomorrow, it is sure to insist – as did Labour last week – that much of the coming pain can be swept away by the magic of efficiency savings.

True, some of it can, and should. But to assume they'll be enough is testing the intelligence of voters to the limit.

But who can blame the parties for trying?