gillian duffy

A row of unremarkable, three-bedroom houses in the Shawclough area of Rochdale, will for ever be remembered as the Prime Minister’s Via Dolorosa, the scene of his greatest pain and humiliation. And the Downing Street media minders: young, shell-shocked and in denial. An old bigot, that’s what she is. And the radio mike still attached to his waste.

What was Mr Brown to do. He was supposed to be checking out of Manchester’s Midland Hotel in preparation for more campaigning. Oh to be a fly on the wall for that perfect Malcolm Tucker moment.

The media had already got to work on Mrs Duffy. And in he went.

The assembled crowd waited in silence outside the door, as if attending an old-fashioned Irish funeral in which the coffin is brought forth through the front door. Again, the deathly rictus.

It was a misunderstanding – that was all. “Repentant” was the Prime Minister’s word for it. Which in human means furious.

David Cameron had spent the morning at a Coca Cola plant in Wakefield, not far away on the other side of the Pennines. He looked two-faced, and out of touch with voters at a moment he needs to show just how in touch he is. Unfortunately for Labour this also changes the news agenda for the day and focus on it could be costly. It was their mic he drove away with.

Brown's apologised to the now-famous Gillian Duffy, on the phone and then in person, at her home. They're telling the PM, he was right, why go back on it.

He has to because it's too close to the election not to do public damage control on this.


Just one ill-fated private remark from Gordon Brown is grist for the mill.
Politicians have been "gaffe-ing" since the dawn of the vote.

The difference today, it seems, is the ubiquitous cameras that record every breath our elected leaders take, while the Internet disperses that information with lightening speed. The beast needs to be fed and we hungrily eat it up.
Here are some of the other unexpected stars of the campaign.
After the 66-year old grandmother from Rochdale harangued the Prime Minister over immigration, tuition fees and the national debt, many journalists expressed admiration for her grasp of the issues. But it was Gordon Brown's dismissal of her as a "bigoted woman" that put her in the A-list of accidental stars. The "40-year old black man from Plymouth" quoted by David Cameron as being "ashamed" of the "out-of-control system" of immigration. In fact he is 51, and had been in the Royal Navy for six years, not 30 as the Tory leader claimed.