Be prepared for a white-knuckle ride in the financial markets

Yet things do not look so inspiring in the UK and I think the spring results season could bring with it its share of disappointments.

However, it is really politics that will be the governing force for some time.

Conservative leader David Cameron is in a bind. With more than 20 per cent of the working population now employed by the state – excluding the armed forces – and an even larger number dependent upon central spending, being either too young, too old, too idle, too ill or too unlucky to look after themselves, it is something of a challenge to ask this voting block to support an economic and political force which will be focused on reducing the amount available to them.

Of course, the Labour Party faces similar challenges which, to be fair, Alistair Darling is prepared to acknowledge, even if his next-door-neighbour would rather promote the financial Brigadoon he now seems to inhabit, a fantasy world of economic utopia. We are, perhaps, fortunate not to be involved in the eurozone. The so-called "Pigs" economies – the acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain – have as alarming central deficits as ourselves. We are all collectively suffering from years of irresponsible monetary policy, which evolved gradually into a widespread assumption that a loan is really a gift. To an extent these debts are indeed as ethereal as it appears Gordon Brown believes, capable of being written-off by the continued printing of money and the re-ignition of the inflationary fuse, if hopefully not to the extent that engulfed Zimbabwe.

Investment markets are understandably, therefore, jittery. We will probably, as usual, muddle through, with much talk about avoiding moral hazard, refusing to endorse financial irresponsibility whilst covertly doing just that, providing the wherewithal to bridge state funding gaps and in the event finally writing-off debt. In fact, the economic challenges are probably more or less appreciated. It is the political dimensions that are depressingly uncertain.

Alex Salmond appears now to be selling more meals than Gordon Ramsay whilst apparently no longer kissing babies on the election campaign but, instead, offering them the vote. Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is wooing the Lib Dems with the tantalising prospect of "alternative voting". I am not convinced. If the Scottish electorate's idea of putting a cross against a single name is complicated enough, multiple choice must be completely beyond comprehension.

Would a hung parliament be such a disaster? Probably, if only because it would postpone the inevitable while tedious horse trading, of the sort we have already seen at Holyrood, leads to the prevarication of policy when decisiveness is actually required. I actually believe David Cameron will prevail with a working majority as I do not think that the opinion polls fully reflect the progress that the Conservatives are achieving in the critical marginal seats, where this particular battle will be decide. However, assuming Cameron becomes Prime Minister on 6 May, it is unlikely he will have a particularly substantial majority. As a result, not only will he be facing formidable economic challenges but the political authority that the lack of an overwhelming mandate will promote could cause him some not inconsiderable problems just when he is having to face down the public sector unions.

For investors, there may be shafts of light, promoted by that harbinger of an early economic recovery, increasing merger and acquisition activity. I certainly do not expect investment markets to collapse unless there is some catastrophic deterioration on the international political stage. The ambitions and synergies of the emerging and developing economies should underwrite global growth over the next couple of years but for markets it is going to be something of a white-knuckle ride, I fear.

Bryan Johnston is divisional director at Brewin Dolphin.