England, April 29: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to make a humiliating apology today after he was caught on microphone calling a senior citizen “bigoted”.
Mr Brown was confronted by the 66-year-old woman, Gillian Duffy, while election campaigning in Rochdale, northern England.
After spending nearly five minutes answering her questions about immigration and migrant workers from Eastern Europe, he told her, “It’s been very good to meet you,” before getting into a car.
However, a Sky New wireless microphone picked up his words to an aide as he was driven away.
He said, “That was a disaster … You should never have put me with that woman … Whose idea was that?”
Brown went on, “It’s just ridiculous.”
His aide then asked, “What did she say?”
He replied, “Oh, everything, she’s just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to vote Labour.”
Watch the video of Gordon Brown
Ms Duffy, who worked for 30 years at Rochdale’s local council and still works with handicapped children, told reporters: “I’m very upset … He’s an educated person. Why has he come out with words like that?
“He’s going to lead this country and he’s calling an ordinary woman who’s just come up and asked him questions that ordinary people what most people would have asked him.
“They’re not doing anything about the national debt, and it’s going to be tax, tax, tax for another 20 years to get out of this national debt, and he’s calling me a bigot.”
‘I blame myself’
Ms Duffy had asked Mr Brown to explain why she was still paying tax as a widowed pensioner.
Mr Brown later expressed his regret during a live radio interview. “Of course I apologise if I have said anything offensive.”
“I would never put myself in a position where I would want to say anything like that about a woman I met. It was a question about immigration that, I think, was really annoying.
“I blame myself for what is done. You’ve got to remember that this was me being kind to the broadcasters with my microphone on, rushing into the car because I had to get to another appointment, and they have chosen to play my private conversation with the person who was in the car with me.
“I know these things can happen. I apologise profusely to the lady concerned. I don’t think she is that, I think it was just the view that she expressed that I was worried about, that I could not respond to.”
Ms Duffy initially told reporters that she hoped Mr Brown would remain Prime Minister, but after the gaffe she said she was “not bothered whether he does now . . . I don’t think he will”.
She said that although she was a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party she would no longer be sending in her postal vote ballot.
—Agencies