#bigotgate
I’m not going to pretend for a moment that Gordon was anything other than wrong in saying what he said, but I want to make two points. Firstly, the media actually are blowing this out of all proportion. Secondly, there is not a single person in this country who has ever done any campaigning who has not walked away from an door, shaking their head and muttering obscenities about that voter in particular and the electorate in general under their breath.
If a candidate for elected office were shown not to have made an unguarded comment at all during an election campaign, I would not vote for them on the basis that they would be an unthinking, unfeeling automaton. ‘Politician is rude’ is not a news story.
Now, could we start talking about something of more import like, say, the impending double-dip recession being occasioned by the situation in Greece?
?xD.
April 29th, 2010 at 10:55 am
There is something so beautifully fitting about this episode, it is entirely appropriate (for once!) for the media to focus on this incident. Because it’s not just incidental, but in fact entirely captures the principal problem with politics today – the alienation of the political class from the majority of the electorate and the total evasion on the former’s part to engage the latter in debate.
So, in this instance, the PM deigns to talk to some ‘real people’; a citizen – and Lab supporter – asks Brown entirely legitmate questions, voicing concerns many people have. Rather than respond, or engage the person in an argument, and argue their side, Brown instead just patronises the ‘old dear’ and asks her about bullshit like her grandkids.
It’s Brown’s right to think of her as a bigot if he wishes, and it’s also right that he should be able to have private conversations and they not be recorded and be the subject of public scrutiny: he’s got his right to privacy. BUT, the episode does demonstrate his sheer hypocrisy (and that of the entirety of the political class)!
The man who maintains border controls (and the cruel system of detention and deportation that goes along with it) while at the same time failing to provide for the building of sufficient housing, and economic growth, which would entirely negate any ‘problem’ with immigration…calls someone who raises a question about immigration a bigot. Absurd! If he had argued with her and she had continued to go on about Eastern Europeans, and then called her a bigot, fair enough. But he didn’t- he maintained the Official Silence on immigration, neither arguing for open borders, nor for border controls, but instead patronising a potential voter with inanities.
Even worse, he then apologises and he (along with Alan Johnson…as well as several Tories) go on about how “awful” it is that this “poor woman” has been “hurt, offended, etc”. Again, more elitist patronising rubbish.
This isn’t just about Brown, but the PM deserves all that gets off the back of this.
April 29th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
I don’t see what’s so criminal about calling someone who’s been ranting about legal migration a bigot. For it is what she is.
April 29th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Poor old Gordon. What a shame!
May 2nd, 2010 at 8:15 am
When she said something about people from Eastern Europe I thought she meant Polish plumbers, and I thought yes, she is a bigot. But then on the Rochdale Observer website people mentioned Romanian gypsy beggars. If that is what she meant, it is a legitimate concern. Those people are parasites, mostly I think run by criminal gangsters, and something needs doing about it.