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The gaffe that could kill off Gordon Brown
In minutes this has turned into the most damaging off-mike remark in modern politics. It might finish off Mr Brown altogether. He's just insulted a 66-year-old widow without cause. And she's a Labour supporter. The contrast between him patting her on her back and praising her for being from a good family' and trashing her in the privacy of his Jaguar will horrify the Labour party, never mind the electorate. To judge by the foaming frenzy of the TV networks, this will help to depress the Labour vote even further.All Gillian Duffy did was to press Mr Brown on his performance and the failings of politics. She was just passing and thought she would have her say. She deserved better than being dismissed as a bigoted woman' by the Prime Minister once she was out of earshot. Off-mike blunders are a routine hazard of politics (bastards', yo Blair') but displaying contempt for the voters on that scale is catastrophic. As she has just said: I'm very disappointed. It's very upsetting. He's an educated person. He wants to lead the country.' Ouch ouch ouch. He's made it worse by apologising with qualification, with a weasely if'. What makes it worse is that Mr Brown had just finished a conversation with her which he was anxious to prolong after he discovered that she was not his enemy. She was in fact a fan of what Labour was doing on education, for example, in her area. She had just patted his hand and wished him well. He asked for the names of her grandchildren, praised the red of her jacket, and described her and hers as a good family'. That should have been good retail politics, with what looked like a nicely deflected bit of danger: angry woman telling him what are you going to do to get us out out of all this debt Gordon?' mollified and turned into an ally by sheer persistence. Three more points to consider. On the substance: is she bigoted? She pressed Mr Brown about immigration, but like millions of people who are anxious about the sea-change to society that results from the Government's open-doors policy, concern is not the same as bigotry. For Mr Brown, in his frustration, to assume she is bigoted, speaks volumes about the contempt of the political classes for the fears of of the voters. On the detail: Sue Nye, the long-serving gate-keeper who stood by as Mr Brown was harangued by Mrs Duffy, needs to watch her back. In the full remarks, the PM blames her for putting me with that woman'. On the pressures of politics: We should acknowledge that we are in uncharted territory. Consider what we are witnessing. Under pressure Mr Brown says the kind of things that politicians say all the time. A microphone picks it up. It is replayed instantly. And now Mr Brown is forced to have the tape replayed to him while he is on the radio with Jeremy Vine but with cameras on him to record his reaction, head in hands. In under an hour, blunder to firestorm. Gladstone never had to put up with this. Blimey. Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2010-04-28 |
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