As the general election campaign enters what that dedicated Labour man Sir Alex Ferguson might call “squeaky bum time”, what can sport expect from the political parties in their forthcoming manifestos?

The short answer is likely to be “not much”. The fallacy that sport and politics should not mix retains a semblance of truth in Westminster.

Conventional wisdom says there are few votes in it. The political calculation is that while successful athletes and teams make for excellent photo-opportunities, they do not shift opinion.

Worse, for those hoping for genuine debate, sport is one of the few areas where politicians can be persuaded to agree. The London Olympics, a triumph with many fathers if ever there was, is the ultimate example of a sporting political consensus.

More importantly, there is not much public money in it. Elections, this one particularly, turn on arguments about the nation’s finances, and sport has never commanded much of the purse.

But widen the definition to include sport and physical education, and consider how the nation might benefit from an active, physically engaged population, and this is an area that should command attention.

Currently public spending on sport is focused on two areas, both managed by quangos: the funding of elite Olympic athletes, the responsibility of UK Sport; and participation, managed by Sport England and its counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The amount of taxpayer money is relatively trifling, less than £150m a year, and under the Coalition the Exchequer contribution has reduced, with the National Lottery filling the gap.

UK Sport spends £125m a-year on Britain’s Olympic athletes, with £40m coming from the Exchequer and the balance from the Lottery. This funding is guaranteed to 2016, covering the Rio Olympic cycle.

Sport England distributes close to £300m annually, with a similar ratio of taxpayer-to-Lottery contribution, distributed via governing bodies on the condition that it is used to boost grassroots participation.

The Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems are all broadly signed up to this model and division of responsibility. But does it work?

At the elite end, counted purely by weight of medals, there is a strong case that it does.

In 2012, publicly-funded British athletes graced the £9bn stage the taxpayer built for them in grand style, securing the biggest haul in a century and finishing third in the medal table. Matching that without home advantage in Rio will be a major challenge, but the model has produced results.

The same cannot be said with certainty for participation, surely the most important and appropriate area for government involvement.

On the government’s own figures, the Coalition is failing to encouraging us into sport, and the Olympic promise to “inspire a generation” is in danger of being squandered.

The last national survey of participation found the number of people playing sport for at least half-an-hour a week had fallen by 125,100. Among those in the lowest socio-economic groups, there were 470,000 fewer.

There was an increase in the build up to the Olympics, but subsequently participation has stalled, and now gone backwards.

School sport meanwhile is still recovering from one of this government’s first acts, the removal of £150m in ring-fenced funding. Driven by Michael Gove’s ideological vision for education, it dismantled a system that had produced a decade of widely-praised work in the state sector.

It took 18 months of lobbying, most influentially by Sebastian Coe, and the imminence of the Olympics, to persuade the government to reinstate the funding and start repairing the damage.

Facilities have suffered in the age of austerity too. Local authorities have been hit hard by cuts, and with no requirement to protect maintenance of sports grounds and swimming pools, some facilities have closed and others are unworthy of an Olympic nation.

Meanwhile child obesity rates continue to rise, and despite grand visions from ministers of all stripe, from Labour’s erstwhile James Purnell to the Conservative’s Jeremy Hunt, the obvious health benefits of physical activity have not matched by access to health funding.

There is one area politicians have found impossible to resist, despite the state making little contribution: professional football.

The Premier League boom has intoxicated a generation of politicians. New Labour loved the backdrop it gave Tony Blair — remember head tennis with Kevin Keegan? — and Gordon Brown just loved the game. Even David Cameron, less obviously a football man, has regularly trotted out an Aston Villa gag on the stump (his uncle was once chairman at Villa Park).

But on all sides of Parliament the glow of reflected glory has been offset by unease about the game’s governance and riches. The lack of accountability to supporters, the power of the Premier League, and the prospect of clubs drifting away from their communities on a rising tide of broadcast income have all caused unease.

All three parties promised reforms in 2010, and we can expect further commitments this time round. (Labour has already promised to legislate fans onto club boards in its manifesto, the first to launch this week.)

Football has unprecedented reach, inspiring tribal loyalty and fascination. No wonder the political class wants to harness it. Whether it should be the priority for the sliver of manifesto space devoted to sport is another matter.