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A standard political wheeze is to imply that your opponents embody the characteristics of others or are in some way masking their true thoughts.

Here we may be witnessing a new - or, rather, renewed - version of the tactic.

The basic format is familiar. As witness Dave Anderson, the MP for Blaydon, who asked delegates to name the difference between David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher.

The answer? Lipstick.

But Scottish Labour frontbenchers are now adapting the strategy. The SNP, they suggest, resemble the Tories.

Indeed, Sarah Boyack professed to find the similarities "startling".

And those were? "They both say anything to anyone to get elected, but neither can be trusted to actually do what needs to be done."

Not, you might think, characteristics which are confined to the pair of parties in question. However, .

Cap dusting

He told delegates that the SNP was advancing cuts in public services which mirrored those he said were intended by the Tories at Westminster.

Further still. He suggested the Nationalists were aching for a Conservative victory in the next UK General Election.

He depicted them as the servile heralds of the Tories, "dusting off their doorman's cap" to usher David Cameron into Downing Street.

We have, of course, heard this before. Indeed, Mr Gray revisited the argument that, by voting against Labour in a confidence motion in 1979, the SNP introduced Margaret Thatcher to power.

Alex Salmond offered fuel for the flames by suggesting in an interview that Scotland had not minded Mrs T's economic approach - so much as the social impact.

But it would appear that, with an eye on Glenrothes and other contests ahead, Labour is reviving the strategy.

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