Apologies if this has already been diaried, I did a search after nothing came up.
Yesterday the right-wing press and Sky News (now officially the UK version of Fox News) went into overdrive after a meeting between the Prime Minister and a 65-year-old woman in Rochdale in Lancashire, north-west England, went awry.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
The extent of the risk only became apparent at 11.44am yesterday, moments after he appeared to have safely circumnavigated some questions posed by Gillian Duffy — a 65-year-old former council worker and lifelong Labour voter who had bumped into him in Rochdale as she was out buying a loaf of bread.
The widow made some pointed remarks about debt and immigration but didn't appear to have unsettled the prime minister too unduly.
She described him as a very nice man. In turn, he called her a bigot. Not to her face, of course, but to an aide as he was being whisked away in his Jaguar
The woman made some rather offensive remarks about Eastern European immigrants, and as Brown's motorcade drove away, unaware he was still wearing his Sky News microphone, he turned to an aide and said:
"That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous." He then blamed Sue Nye, his longstanding aide, for putting him in the awkward position.
Forsyth tried to reassure him, saying: "Not sure that they [the press] will go with that one." But Brown said "they" would. "She was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour," he explained
The issue appeared to have sunk what little chance Labour had of remaining in power, and the pundits were all quick to declare what an unmitigated disaster this was. The Sun newspaper (Murdoch rag) quickly commissioned a poll, and found 50% actually sympathised with the PM and only 9% were less likely to vote Labour as a result. The Sun were obviously hoping to find overwhelming public anger with which to bash the PM, so when they didn't like the results they gagged the poll and refused to publish it.
The final leaders' debate may provide a distraction, and much as I'd hate to give the Tory media advice, my advice would be to drop this petty distraction now. It's not the killer blow for Brown they think it is, and banging on and on about it will just create public sympathy for him, just like the bullying accusations and smears over the botched condolence letter he sent to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.
I should note however that Brown's rant was pretty mild by his standards. He's well known for becoming aggressive when angry and going off on expletive-ridden tirades. Imagine if he'd been overheard punching the seat in front of him and saying "f**king c**t of a woman, should have f**king slapped her". That would have have been trademark Gordonian thing to say, and a bit harder to shrug off.
Edit-I should point out that I meant "lovable old granny" sarcastically