The prospect of the television election debates elicits from me two incompatible responses. On the one hand, I believe strongly that the Greens should be invited. If it’s on the basis of having a seat in the house, then they have the same right as Ukip. If it’s on the grounds of polling, they have a stronger claim than the Liberal Democrats. If it’s on the basis of who Ofcom thinks is a good chap, then Ofcom needs to have a word with itself. I have mild views on how much of a psephological impact the debates have in the first place (some), and whether it constitutes a democratic deficit not to have them (no).

On the other hand, I know how these debates will unfold, if indeed they do: much like a mud wrestle, without the energy, or any prospect of a winner. This election has already turned “debate” into a series of “dids!” and “didn’ts!”. “You caused the crash.” “Didn’t.” “Did.” “We reduced the deficit.” “Didn’t.” “Did.” It is beneath them to perform it, and certainly beneath us all to watch.

Once, finding nothing attractive forthcoming in the political offering, we could turn away to apathy. That was the boom-time option. The idea that politicians are identical, and all we’ve got, once induced a comfortable stupor: now it feels like an anxiety dream.

Something’s Not Right: Insecurity and an Anxious Nation is a report published today by Compass as an overview of the economic situation in which most people find themselves. Its author, Michael Orton, describes a 20-75-5 nation: there’s an intractable fifth of people in poverty, and an unaffected elite numbering approximately 5%, which has held since the 1990s. The difference is that vast space in between, three-quarters of people, who are now beset by named and nameless fears.

There are concrete worries about debt, wages, childcare, food, energy and the impossibility of ever being a homeowner, or the inevitability of rent increases for the tenant with no options. To all this is added less measurable, longer-term anxieties: that workplace security is getting weaker, that whatever is bad now will be worse for the next generation; that the new scale of indebtedness, gargantuan mortgages for those who can get them, student debts running to billions, will result in a new kind of servitude – but to whom? The problem with the status quo, an anti-corporate campaigner said to me once, is that it’s not static. It’s getting worse.

Not one of these fears could ever be called unreasonable – the numbers are in. We are clear that real median hourly wages have gone down by 10.2 percent and are now lower than they were in 1997. People on average incomes are at a greater danger of falling into debt than the unemployed. We are now pursuing what Orton calls “a high living cost, low income, high debt, low savings approach”. It’s rather tactful to call this an “approach”. “Hurtling off a cliff” would work just as well.

The prevalence of anxiety as a condition of modern life is undisputed: according to the Office of National Statistics, 20% of people rate their level of anxiety as six or more out of 10, at any one time. As many as one in three will suffer from panic attacks at some point in their life. The suggested solutions are usually a triangulation of exercise, drugs and cognitive behavioural therapy. In England last year, 40m prescriptions were issued for antidepressants (which includes anti-anxiety drugs). CBT and exercise have their disciples, but clearly aren’t panaceas.

There is no shortage of people – psychologists, sociologists, doctors – looking beyond the frailties of the human mind for wider causes. It is commonplace to cite consumerism and its attendant evils of working too hard to fund it, and missing the things that are important, while you work – and yet however social the problem, the suggested solutions are always individual. Stop wanting things; stop spending; prioritise; downsize; take stock. You can’t control the world, so try controlling your negative response to it.

It is also commonplace, T-shirt-sloganly common, to say that to be anxious is nothing more than a rational response to precarious conditions; but what will it take for us to build that into a set of political demands, rather than try to interrogate them away with introspection and positive self-talk?

At the start of a panic attack, you are supposed to commence the catechism: what am I afraid of? How likely is it to happen? Can I do anything to prevent its happening? This questionnaire was devised as a balm, but what if the answers are “I’m afraid that life will continue to be as hard as it is right now, for my entire life, and be worse for my children.” “I’m afraid this is extremely likely.” “I could do everything about it; just not on my own.” What then? Will the leadership debates take on a new piquancy when politics suddenly looks like the only answer?

Norman Tebbit told the Observer that we were going into the “most awful election campaign that anyone can remember”. His answer was bread and circuses: “The public enjoy confrontations,” he said. It’s so wrong, it’s intoxicating. We have taken confrontation, and sometimes enjoyed it, in lieu of a politics that has anything to say about lives as they are mostly lived. But it’s gone on long enough.