When personal attacks are out of bounds

The caption described it as "the day the Tory sums add up" and it might be possible, just, to regard the image of the Tory leader and his Shadow Chancellor depicted as flying pigs as a piece of harmless political lampooning intended to make a serious point. Insensitive perhaps, culturally crass, ill-timed - given the Auschwitz anniversary - and in lamentable taste, given that both Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are Jewish. But pigs that fly are not exactly a new idea in advertising.

The caption described it as "the day the Tory sums add up" and it might be possible, just, to regard the image of the Tory leader and his Shadow Chancellor depicted as flying pigs as a piece of harmless political lampooning intended to make a serious point. Insensitive perhaps, culturally crass, ill-timed - given the Auschwitz anniversary - and in lamentable taste, given that both Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are Jewish. But pigs that fly are not exactly a new idea in advertising.

When another poster design e-mailed to Labour Party members for their opinion depicts a crazed-looking Michael Howard swinging a watch and looking for all the world like a latter-day Shylock or Fagin, however, there is most definitely a problem that goes way beyond insensitivity. Deliberately or not, shades are being conjured up that have no place in a British election campaign - or any other. The party's response, that the images "are not anti-Semitic, they are anti-Tory", is quite simply inadequate.

It is already clear that this election campaign is likely to turn nasty very early. Michael Howard's decision to play the immigration card last week, was contemptible and a harbinger of the sort of tactics that could be employed. With Mr Howard identified by Labour as an electoral liability to the Tories, it is also clear that many of the party's sharpest campaign barbs will be directed his way.

A focus on personality rather than policies is an unfortunate fact of modern political life: four years ago we saw Labour's depiction of William Hague as "Thatcher in a wig" pitted against the Tories' "New Labour, new danger" poster showing a demonic Mr Blair. The targets of the posters did not like them, but compared with the depictions of Mr Howard, those pictorial jibes look like good, clean fun.

All may be fair in love, war and election campaigns, but the Shylock poster, whether it makes it on to the hoardings or not - and we trust it will not - calls the judgement of Labour's campaign gurus into serious question. That the image got even as far as Labour members signed up to the party's website is already too much exposure. The party's propagandists should think again.