I’m not even objecting to to the idea that “Gordon” is after this money, as if the Prime Minister is going to turn up at your wake, stuff a roll of fifties in his trouser pocket and then go for a slap-up lunch. Gordon Brown’s personal unpopularity makes this a good gambit even though convention dictates that when you personalise taxation as a money-grabbing exercise it’s the Chancellor, not the PM, who’s supposed to be chasing you with a butterfuly net. Alistair Darling just isn’t as disliked as Brown, so Brown has been substituted. This is a well-worn robber-baron fantasy that the right loves to wheel out, and again it will play well with the people the ad was written for.

I’m not even complaining about the notion that Gordon “wants” this money, implying — as, once again, the right are wont to do — that Labour simply enjoy levying taxes. £20,000 to pay for your care in old age is actually an astonishing bargain, not a “R.I.P. off”, but the idea that taxes are raised in order to be spent on services you might want to use is, obviously, rather destructive of the intended message. The ad suggests that this is just another in a long line of things the socialist revolutionaries are doing to the middle classes out of spite.

Let’s also leave aside that the actual claim here is that Labour ministers have refused to rule out the possibility of a mandatory flat-rate tax on estates as one of a whole family of proposals for how to pay for care of the elderly. This is not the same as Labour planning to take up this option, and certainly not the same as “Gordon” wanting to do so. Still, this is a perfectly valid subject on which to raise concerns and have a debate. And finally, let’s not even engage with the question of whether, in voting for a party in a representative democracy, you are also voting for each and every thing they might do for the next five years as well.

No, the big issue for me is that the poster addresses me — and you — directly. The word “you” is an indexical, meaning it points out of the proposition at something in the world, but depending on where the proposition is said — or, in this case, by whom it’s read — the meaning expressed changes. When Kitchener pointed out of the poster at YOU, he may or may not have wanted you, depending on your age, physical fitness and, indeed, nationality.

In this case (and most others) indexical “you” is “unbound”, meaning roughly that the rest of the proposition doesn’t fix its reference in a helpful way. For instance, if the poster had said “If the eligible portion of your estate is worth more than £200,000, then Gordon wants…” that might have been more truthful. Because there’s nothing like this in the poster, the “you” refers to literally every reader: the visiting tourist, the feckless non-owner of property and, of course, anyone else to whom it doesn’t apply.

Frege gave us a handy way to unpack indexicals: replace them with a “definite description” that doesn’t include an indexical. So instead of “you”, what would we put? “The person reading this poster”? I don’t think so, because that would be wrong. Now some more thought needs to be undertaken: who does Goron actually want to take the money off? How can we describe those people accurately?

I’m not suggesting that people writing copy for campaign posters start doing this; that would be silly. In any case, campaign posters are supposed to stir the emotions, not state factual claims. I do, though, think a bit more care is needed when using that big Kitchener YOU in these contexts unless the parties want to be accused of abandoning the facts altogether. We have enough cynicism about mainstream politics in this country already, thanks.