Election 2010: Which party should win the sporting vote?

SECURING the economy, immigration, cutting the deficit or just time for a change - there so many issues in a General Election where, in the immortal words of Johnny Cash, there are still more questions than answers.

CHOICES: Which team are you backing? Brown's Reds, Cameron's Blues or Clegg's Yellows - or none of the above?

But what if only sport was on the ballot paper?

When Labour swept into power 13 years ago they promised to reverse years of chronic lack of investment in sports facilities by successive Conservative governments, whose policy of selling off school playing fields to property developers will forever shame them.

And, to be fair, they've been good for their word - although it's a bit rich for them to claim too much credit for the record medal haul at the Beijing Olympics, the praise is probably more deserving for the athletes, their coaches and the thousands who give up their time freely to coach sport at grassroots level across the country.

However, since taking office  Labour claim to have invested more than £5.5 billion in community sport, while £2.3bn has spent since on school sport in the last seven years.

Although Conservatives will rightly point out that much of that money has come from the Tory-inspired National Lottery - which is also contributing £2.2bn to staging the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

They were stutters - starting with the decision to give the late Tony Banks the Sports Minister's portfolio over the eminently more qualified Tom Pendry, shamefully shunted to the Lords after years of diligent shadowing.

In the intervening years Kate Hoey, the long-serving Richard Caborn and Gerry Sutcliffe have all handled the brief well - although the latter proved just a little too independent minded for Downing Street's spin machine and Caborn will never live down a car crash interview with Claire Balding.