The new Tory election poster surprised many yesterday with its unabashedly rightwing, Thatcherite message targeting unemployed people – perhaps heralding a shift in tactics by David Cameron ahead of tomorrow's televised debate.

As commenter NeoPunk noted, the poster "completely clashes with Cameron's 'friendly open compassionate conservatism' persona, like that scene in Mary Poppins where she suddenly gets all arsey with the kids."

As everyone knows, all the Tories' campaign posters so far have been extensively spoofed on the internet, and the party may have attempted to avoid that fate through the design of this new one: rather than printing the text on an easily edited oblong of colour, the poster's message has been superimposed on to a crowd of faces, even running slightly into the image of Cameron.

But the Bloggerheads website has some bad news for the Tories:

After a well-documented series of hilarious own-goals, the Conservatives appear to have gone to a lot of trouble to make their latest poster "unshoppable" ... so I knocked this 'blank' up in a spare two minutes I had. Have fun.

Spoof Tory poster by jaime_campbell at http://twitpic.com/1h32jb

And many people have. One of the first offerings (left) simply superimposed a piece of House of Commons notepaper over the top, with the handwritten message: "We need to turn nasty, George, it's getting desperate now."

John Prescott has also produced one, which replaces the Tory message with: "Let's cut child benefit to give tax breaks for millionaires." The former deputy prime minister turned new media evangelist is publicising the best he has received on Twitter. They range from the witty and non-political (justinmoorhouse), to the humourlessly precise (hannahnicklin).

Spoof Tory poster by jaime_campbell at http://twitpic.com/1h9nvg

Getting a little more surreal, this one by jaime_campbell (above) suggests Cameron's "plan B" involves aping Star Wars villain Darth Vader, while this one from qwghlm should need no explanation.

So the poster is not unspoofable – in technical terms. But it has to be said that that original message – "Let's cut benefits for those who refuse work" – is so baldly and comically reactionary that it read like self-parody already.