The enemy without

Needless to say, the rightwing blogosphere has been in its usual hateful tizz about my arrival at Birmingham. Guido Fawkes claims that I was wearing a Haiwaiian shirt. It was in fact a plain beige number from Uniqlo. He was right about me wearing sandals, though, so we apparently we can trust half of what he says. One day I hope to look as handsome and cool as he does. Incidentally, if you check out the posts after his little dig, you will be genuinely appalled. None are really political; most are deeply offensive, and several are homophobic and obscene. And they try and claim they are no longer the nasty party.

Much nicer about me, of course, was the "gentleman of cyber space" Iain Dale, whom I bumped into outside the conference hall. He was asking about the internet rebuttal unit I am supposedly setting up. That's not quite the whole story, but there's no doubt Labour supporters do need to do more to make our case in all media – the party's new website is a great start. This is worth a visit just to see the excellent ads that have been developed asking Cameron the tough questions he's yet to answer.

However we get our message across – and I think it's got to involve everything from door knocking to Twitter – we have to combine a positive vision with strong criticism of the Tories. So I often do my own tough questioning in the old-fashioned way by going along to events and putting my hand in the air at the end. Last month I asked George Osborne about fairness after his Demos speech, and last night I popped into the fringe meeting the Fabians held here with Iain Duncan Smith. He spearheads the Centre for Social Justice, and there's no doubting his interest in, and warm words about, the subject. But, like the rest of the Tories' slick PR positioning, it falls apart when you move onto hard policy. I asked him whether giving £1bn in inheritance tax breaks to the country's 3,000 richest estates was socially just – yes or no? Simple question, no answer. Like the rest of them: nice guys, bad politics.