Gordon's gaffe sinks Labour in the heat of the British election campaign

(Previously published by Blogcritics)

Just when you think it cannot get any worse for Gordon Brown, he drives what has got to be the final nail into his political coffin.
And Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg comes off looking like a genius for refusing to consider teaming up with him in the event of a hung parliament. Because, as many a Labour staffer knows, Gordon Brown is no man to work with—arrogant, temperamental, moody and pernicious daydreamer that he is.
In the town of Rochdale, Mr. Brown stopped to have a chat with a 65-year-old woman named Gillian Duffy. Mrs. Duffy told the Prime Minister that she had been a Labour supporter and voter her entire life, but was concerned about her pension, Britain's financial state and ...
... immigrants.
Yep. Mrs. Duffy, a woman who's had liberal, soft-socialist leanings her whole adult voting life, had to mention that dreaded "i"-word to someone who thinks it's a non-issue. The woman simply wondered why so many Eastern European immigrants are getting in and why they seem to enjoy better services than her. Duffy said that she's worked hard, since she was a teenager, and has paid her entire adult life into a system she feels is betraying her—a system that is also being stretched to the limit via unchecked, open-door immigration.
When Brown got back into his chauffered car, he apparently did not know his microphone was still clipped to his shirt. He immediately began to assert to his team that the meeting with Mrs. Duffy was a "disaster," that he should not have talked to the woman—"whose idea was it?" is a question you can hear him asking—and opined that it was "ridiculous" for her to reconsider her support for Labour.
And he also called her a "bigoted woman." Honestly, dear reader, watch the video on the link I provided. It's only too revealing.
Brown reacted with horror when a radio station played back the recording—he put his head in his hands for most of the broadcast—and immediately whipped around to Mrs. Duffy's home to personally apologize.
Empty gesture, empty words. It's the final, rock-solid proof we've all been waiting for that Gordon Brown is a menace to British democracy.
Two trains of thought here: (1) Gordon Brown does not respect the average British citizen, especially the average white British citizen. Immigrants are people he can manipulate. His government can treat them well in the hopes of guaranteed votes, so who cares how many cities, towns and villages become swamped with them? British taxpayers have unreasonable concerns anyway, like the cost of living, the tax they pay, the state of their health service, and the state of their pensions. These people are a write-off in terms of votes anyway, so let's flood the country with newcomers who are only too happy to be here and get fawned over by the current government.
Or (2): Mr. Brown cannot, for one moment, conceive how anyone could be unhappy with him, his party and his government for putting Britain in the current economic and social mess that it's in, and thinks it's genuinely ridiculous that anyone should have complaints. How could anyone not want to give him the chance to be the country's next elected Prime Minister? He and Labour are about a "fairer future," after all.
Labour's chances before Gordon Brown's gaffe were slim but not grim. They now could not be grimmer. For those who are happy to see the trouncing of this washed-up, just-short-of-tyrannical government, this incident could not have come at a better time.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.