Brown's bad day

Brown's bad day

When everyone looks back on this day of the British general election campaign, no-one will be happy with the outcome.

On one hand, there is a working-class pensioner; a lifelong Labour supporter who took the opportunity to confront the prime minister on genuine concerns for her and her family. 

When told - in an unguarded moment caught on a radio microphone - he had later described her as a "bigoted woman", Gillian Duffy looked shattered, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. 

She genuinely could not understand what she had said that he would think was bigoted.

Then there was Gordon Brown, the British prime minister. His first apology during a radio interview was less than fulsome and so he was marched back to the poor woman's house to say sorry like an errant schoolboy rather than the leader of one of the most powerful nations on earth. 

Clearly some of his advisors felt they had to turn the situation around and so he spent forty minutes behind her plain-white front door apologising, becoming in his own words "a penitent sinner" while the media camped outside. 

This incident has the potential to finish off the Labour campaign and end for ever Brown's hopes of being elected prime minister.

His comments, a reaction to her questions on immigration, will anger millions of voters, many of them Labour supporters, who are also worried about the number of foreign workers moving in to the UK. 

It shows Brown simply doesn't understand their concerns. He certainly doesn't share them.

If he wants to win, he has to energise his base support, convince them to turn out. He just handed them another reason to stay at home.

Secondly, this will confirm what has been often said about Brown - not only does he not like criticism, he simply can't handle it.

And finally it demonstrates the prime minister's idea of basing his election campaign on meeting real people is really just PR spin. 

He's spent the days since the campaign was announced meeting Labour party supporters, people who will clap and cheer and shout "Well done Gordon" (although there have been precious few of them). 

When real people are introduced to the mix, it goes horribly wrong.

This will turn the focus away from policy back on to Brown's personality. It's just what he didn't want. 

With a week to go in the election campaign, he was already fighting for his political life. The battle just got a whole lot harder.