The spectre of immigration returned to haunt Gordon Brown today as he was confronted by yet another voter who demanded the Prime Minister explain what he was planning to do about it.
Exactly 24 hours after he was caught branding Gillian Duffy ‘a bigot’, the Prime Minster found himself being forced to defend Labour’s policy on immigration as he visited a factory in the West Midlands.
Despite his attempts to draw a line under yesterday’s appalling gaffe, Mr Brown was asked by an employee about what Labour ‘plan to do about immigration’ which is ‘way too high in this country’.
Mr Brown insisted that ‘yesterday was yesterday’ before adding: ‘I think I’ve apologised and I’ve said it was the wrong word to use’.
He then claimed that the Government had brought in a tougher ‘Australian-style’ points system to stem the flow of unskilled migrants into the country.
Mr Brown had been desperate to focus on the economy ahead of tonight’s last televised leaders’ debate but today’s exchange highlights how difficult it will be to escape the fallout from ‘Bigotgate’.
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Updates:
1:47 pm EDT, April 29th, 2010 — “A BIGOTED woman.” (Story in sidebar)
1:52 pm EDT, April 29th, 2010 — Gordon Brown fails to make Time 100 most influential people
2:00 pm EDT, April 29th, 2010 — Winning election a poisoned chalice, leaders warned
How miserable for Brown and all those career politicians when they have to engage the great unwashed at election time. We are so unappreciative of their good intentions and ask uncomfortable questions. My goodness, they expect robots handing over the tax money without a whimper. Cheers.
“Backstabbing Brown” (he killed Blair just as Martin did Chretien) should have been gone long ago. Now it’s far to late for Labor.
As in the case of Canada’s Liberal Party, infighting has killed the party and they will be gone for a generation. No doubt about it.
Frankly, it looks good on them.
I’ve never seen a worse bunch of weasels.
“Backstabbing Brown” — where did that come from? Blair and Brown had an agreement from before Blair became Labour leader that Brown would succeed Blair. If anything, Blair reneged on the deal by staying in office much longer than either had envisaged when the deal was made.
Brown is incompetent and nasty, perhaps even corrupt (although that is not certain), but he only gave hints of disloyalty to the leader when Blair refused to say when he was planning to give up the leadership.
And it is not infighting that is likely to cost Labour he election. It is gross incompetence on the economy, on immigration, on defence, on jobs creation, you name it they failed. Infighting is a symptom of the awareness that the party faces catastrophic defeat.