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What do tell us?

Let's kick off with what they don't tell us.

They don't tell us that the Welsh Conservatives have changed their minds on this particular freebie in any way at all. From the first school to sign up right through to the 1000th the Tory group in the Assembly have been against the free breakfasts programme. They've made it clear all along that they'd scrap the scheme and spend the money saved on other priorities. Boiled egg and soldiers? How about books.

Neither do they tell us that the Assembly Government has changed tack on cereals and low fat yoghurt. Providing free, healthy school breakfasts in 66% of Welsh schools is, they say, good for children's general well being, good for their ability to concentrate and learn. It's a scheme that works and a sign of a government that wants to give a helping hand to children from all backgrounds.

But take a look at the language. Look first at .

Yes, the line about giving "our youngest children a flying start" is still here in 2010, as is the counter argument that the £8m costs could be "better invested elsewhere".

But otherwise? How about Tory AM Paul Davies dismissing the scheme on Radio Wales this morning as "pre-school childcare for the middle classes" and Labour Minister Leighton Andrews warning that if the Tories were in power, "they would not hesitate in punishing our children." For Thatcher Thatcher the milk snatcher read Bourne the breakfast slasher.

Now there's a Minister who's fully signed up to that other Labour programme - the 'make 'em fear the Tories' scheme,

Mr Hain says he's "able to pin-point 2007 as the precise moment when he started to notice a Tory revivial in Wales". Why then? "People would come to their doorsteps in Cardiff and say they were Tories".

The line of attack now then? Not to pretend that public spending cuts are avoidable. We know they're not and we don't want anyone to tell us otherwise. Yes, public services are devolved but the public money that makes them work comes direct from Westminster. Cuts announced there mean cuts here. The Labour line then, in Wales as elsewhere, is to accuse the Tories of cutting early and oh yes, they'll enjoy cutting, they'll take the food from our children's mouths as enthusiastically as a trucker tucking into a double fry-up.

What does this latest version of the scrap-the-freebie tell us? That the election is under a hundred breakfasts away and that here are two parties at least who know that to avoid being toast on that day, they must go in hard on each other's spending plans.

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