Tim Montgomerie has made the brave journey from the comforts of his ConservativeHome website into the enemy territory known as the Guardian's Comment is Free pages and has launched a brief and well mannered attack on extreme Labour rhetoric.

In his article "Stop accusing Tories of being a cross between Fagin and Goebbels" (I think Goebbels might take issue with being crossed with Fagin) he bemoans the kind of hatred found in politics on both sides of the political divide, but particularly with that faced by Conservatives.

In his time as a political activist he has been spat at in the face by Labour activists and has been accused of working for MI5. He also concedes that Tory activists are also guilty of distasteful actions, such as in the late 80's/early 90's when Young Conservatives could often be found sporting "Hang Mandela" T-shirts.

Montgomerie accepts that politics always attracts the odd extremist but what he rightly takes issue with is extreme rhetoric being used by figures who are supposed to be leaders of their political movements, not the extremist fringe.

He quotes Len McCluskey of the Unite union as denouncing "the vicious Tory determination to make the poor suffer". Unfortunately Mr McCluskey was not the only figure on the left last week to suggest that the Tories were cutting out of some sadistic desire to smash the workers. Perhaps it is inevitable that people obsessed with class war will assume their class "enemies" are just as keen to smash them.

I remember being quite disgusted with the Labour Party conference last year as minister after minister and trade unionist after trade unionist got up and slurred the Tories. I can't say I am a great fan of the Tories but they did not deserve to be slandered as Labour figures are often wont to do.

Last year a certain David Miliband (remember him?), said in his conference speech that the Tories wanted to "trash anything European", despite the Tory leadership broadly accepting the EU project. He also said that their "burning ambition" and their "great cause for the future" was the restoration of fox hunting.

He added that he was "sick" with how the Tories sat with "extremists" in the European Parliament despite Labour sitting with some rather dubious people themselves (not that he mentioned them). It would all be laughable were it not coming from someone posing as Britain's representative to the world at the time.

Mr Miliband became even more absurd when he claimed that the Tories had condemned the NHS as a "60 year mistake", a claim repeated at the conference by Labour's Deputy Leader Harriet Harman.

To claim that a party committed to ring-fencing the NHS budget at a time of financial austerity viewed that same NHS as a "60 year mistake" takes some doing, so where did such an odd claim come from?

It came from Tory MEP Daniel Hannan who said on American TV that "We've lived through this mistake [of the NHS] for 60 years now". Mr Hannan, while loved by much of the Tory rank-and-file, is hardly a spokesman for the whole of the Tory Party, nor the Tory leadership which has been falling over itself in recent years to declare its love for the NHS.

Despite this Ms Harman shamelessly declared that David Cameron refused to take action against Mr Hannan because he had a column in the Daily Telegraph, implying that Mr Cameron feared the pen of Mr Hannan. This despite the fact that Mr Hannan's blog on the Telegraph website (he does not have a column) is broadly supportive of David Cameron in spite of significant policy differences between the two.

Even were Mr Hannan as dangerous and unhinged as Ms Harman suggested, it is unlikely that a bad review from the MEP would bring Mr Cameron crashing down.

It was this shameless smearing of opponents which brings utter disgrace on the Labour Party. Rather than trying to get elected on their own merits Labour attempted to win this year's election by scaring their voters with tales of the Tory bogeyman reminiscent of Grendel and his Mother (the Mother presumably being Margaret Thatcher).

Sadly the Tories tried their own version of this trick, which while being less nasty, was just as pitiful. Rather than using smears against Labour to scare the voters, they attempted to frighten people into voting for them in order to avoid the Armageddon that they claim would have resulted from a hung Parliament.

So dumbfounded was I by the sheer nastiness and slanderous nature of Labour rhetoric I asked a friend why they say such outrageous things. The response I got was sad but I suspect may have a grain of truth to it: "They do it because they think their voters are uneducated and will believe it".

Indeed I cannot think of any other reason why people as educated and presumably well informed as David Miliband and Harriet Harman would make such absurd statements. I suspect that may also explain why the Tories want to pass a "Sovereignty Bill" through a Parliament which is already sovereign according to the British constitution as well as explaining their strange campaign against the horrors of a hung parliament.

It would be nice if the "New Politics" which everyone keeps banging on about would see both political parties be honest with the voters. It's too much to expect them to like each other, but at least they should be honest about each other and about themselves.

With an election probably more than four years away things are likely to be a little cooler than they have been of late, but I suspect that the smearing will begin again as the country moves closer to polling day in 2015.