zzzzzz...hmm? oh...Who is the real 'Nasty Party'?

Well that was a lively speech...

I have no interest in picking over it, but I did want to pick up on a few things:

Labour says the Tories are planning a "ruthless" cull of frontline services.

Labour says the Tories are "foaming at the mouth with excitement" at the prospect of "savage" cuts.

(Both from BBC politics top stories)

Those are some very nasty words, do the Tories use such emotive wording?

The Conservatives had accused Mr Brown of being evasive on the issue

[Osbourne] accused the government of seeking to "try and pump the bubble back up with more government spending and debt-fuelled consumption".

hmm, a little more polite, no accusations of being 'ruthless' or 'savage culls' from the Tories, nor of course, the Lib Dems

But Labour on the other hand, stick to the 'nasty party' line - they may not openly say it, but this sort of language is clearly emotionally charged, and it's British politics at its very worst

The thing is, they accuse of the Tories of pretty much being evil, when they are the only party casting around such nasty words - the two opposition parties focus on the argument while Labour call their opponents 'ruthless', nobody feels the need to resort to calling Labour evil socialists

I'm under no illusions that the Tories can, when they want, be nasty, but clearly right now Cameron has dropped the tactic, and yet Labour get away with what is basically slander and accuse the Tories of committing the crime where they are clearly the worst offenders

And here is the Labour argument: 'we will make nice cuts, the Tories will make nasty ones, yah-boo!' - aside from their horrible use of language, their argument is made up of nothing but slandering the opposition, clearly Cameron is happy to let Brown shoot himself in the foot on this

But what I really want to know is - who does this appeal to? Do the hardcore labour votes really love to simply hear that the Tories are nasty? Unfortunately they probably do, sad really - but this line of argument where Labour have basically descended into the mindless tribalism of the 80s will never convince 'Middle England', where the election will be won - they do a disservice to politics by behaving like this

All this leads me to think that the Labour strategists have pretty much given up on winning and want to shore up their own base for fear of what happened at the European elections