Minister says 'we must deceive our own supporters'?

There is a rather excellent piece in the Sunday Times today about Brown and his constant lying on spending that is well worth a read. Most tellingly in it though is the following quote from an unnamed minister about the real driver behind the entirely stupid dividing "line of cuts vs cuts investment" (my emphasis added)

We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us... This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again."

Do they really hold the intelligence of their own core-vote in such contempt that they'd even admit their intention is to deceive them?

Like I and many others have said before, the next election is not about "cuts vs investment", it's about Tory honesty on what needs to be done, against Labour deception about what they too know needs to be done.