Gordon Brown still hasn’t learned his lesson from Bigotgate

As Gordon Brown’s new memoir, My Life, Our Times, sends mild ripples across the political play pool, the rest of the country tends to its own business. But there’s an episode from Brown’s turbulent spell as Prime Minister that merits revisiting: ‘Bigotgate’. Not only was it the moment that perhaps secured Labour’s dramatic fall from power but Brown’s finessing of what happened has worrying signs for politicians’ private frankness.

You remember it well: while pressing the flesh in Rochdale as part of the 2010 election campaign, Brown found himself in conversation with a lifelong Labour voter. For a savvy politician, this was a golden opportunity to play the crowd and reiterate the party’s core beliefs. Gillian Duffy, a 66-year-old pensioner, had other ideas, instead cataloguing a long litany of gripes, including the dread issue of immigration. Brown struggled to keep his head above the water as the cameras devoured the clumsy exchange.