By Eamonn Dwyer

Gordon Brown’s accidentally recorded side-swipes at a venting voter are devastating. It lays bare his claim to care about ordinary people’s problems, and instead reveals a two-faced politician obsessed with the stage management of his campaign.

The recording fleshes out Andrew Rawnsley’s devastating depiction of Brown in power – a bullying, vindictive, petty man. As soon as he sits in the car, Brown is immediately looking for people to blame for the encounter, and singles out a female aide called Sue. From the tone of his voice – icy with rage – one is confident he will make time in his busy schedule to give her a bollocking.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the sounds of someone (presumably Brown) striking something repeatedly in the car. It’s all very reminiscent of Rawnsley’s claims that Brown stabbed the head seat of his limousine when frustrated.

It’s significant because of where it happened and to whom. Sixty-five year old Gillian Duffy is a former Labour supporter and is concerned about crime, tax and immigration. She’s also from Rochdale, a borough which has seen large numbers of Labour voters switching to the BNP.

The preceding conversation with Duffy is worth listening to in full. Brown’s manner is dreadful, interrupting and avoiding answering the questions, mixed in with completely disingenuous attempts to profess how much he respects Duffy’s career as a child carer.

‘You can’t say anything about the immigrants… but all these immigrants are flocking in from Eastern Europe?’

Brown defends immigration by saying one million Brits have got jobs in Europe, but quickly moves away from the question. Of course, he doesn’t go into the real reasons Labour has overseen massive large scale immigration.

New Labour’s neo-Thatcherite leanings support a fluid labour market; immigration provides business with cheap workers, an incentive for British workers to become more skilled, and creates a ‘competitive’ job market where employers and businesses are able to call the shots. In addition, migrants pay income tax that fills a vital gap for Britain’s aging population.

But Brown didn’t dare put these arguments to Duffy – from his response in the car, it is presumably because he thinks Duffy would be too thick to get the arguments. She is, after all, a ‘bigot’ from a no-hope white area.

In his interview later with Jeremy Vine, he blamed journalists from stopping him answer the question in full. On the contrary; Britain’s tepid, forelock tugging front-line hacks rarely nail politicians, with a few exceptions. On this occasion, they were more than happy to sit back and watch Rochdale Woman badger Brown and didn’t interrupt once.

Ironically, I can’t imagine Old Etonian David Cameron making such remarks, and not just because he’s a lot slicker than the hapless Scotsman. I don’t believe he feels an instinctive contempt for the working class. Instead, he views them as people disenfranchised by poor quality state education and a big government economy that robs them of ambition and leaves their entrepreneurial instincts unawakened. It’s a deeply patronising viewpoint, but one unlikely to give rise to Brown’s abject remarks.

New Labour’s traditional voter – the English working class – have been taken for a ride for years, and have been ignored on immigration, manufacturing and long-term poverty. By buffeting Labour with safe seats, they have found themselves left behind by the New Labour project, and held in total contempt by their limousined leaders.

Brown’s dénouement reminds me of the ending of Animal Farm, in which the farm animals look onto the banquet and are unable to tell farmer from pig, and pig from farmer. Voting BNP or Conservative isn’t the answer, but reforming the political system offers some hope for the radical change Britain’s underclass needs.

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