One thing she isn’t is a postal vote envelope, although to read the Mail you’d think she was: the picture above referred to ‘Mrs Duffy (right)’. And it went on to explain with barely contained glee that she didn’t object to the word ‘bigot’ so much as the term ‘that woman’. She’s Disgusted Bigot of Rochdale, but emphatically not that Rochdale woman.
This was a line of reasoning I couldn’t follow, because reading all the comments this largely admirable woman has made, I couldn’t find anything bigoted in them anywhere. Having been born on Rochdale Road, I can tell you that bigots aren’t hard to find there: Joan Bakewell’s the only liberal woman I can think of from that neck of the woods – and she didn’t hang around.
Perhaps in Gillian’s neighbourhood, bigot is a term of endearment. “Eh up yer old bigot” people remark fondly as they see her, “Are yer goin’ tert BNP whist-drive later?” This seems unlikely: I met hundreds of Gillians when I was a kid, and while they were tough and uncompromising, they merely spoke what they saw.
It seems to me that this is what Mrs Duffy did last week. The lady did a fine thing, if only for one reason: she pierced the protective bubble these awful, twisted people insist on having round themselves at all times. And without the use of any crucifixes or holy water, Gordon Brown withered into dust before our very eyes.
Last year, nby referred to Mr Brown as ‘electoral anti-matter’. This was after he kept pitching up at bye-elections, only to see the candidate’s figures plummet the next day. The quite remarkable way in which The Worm gets brewer’s droop every time he speaks has to be seen to be believed. His other great ploy was ringing ordinary voters up at 6 am and wondering why they were a tad annoyed. Now it seems that Gordon is demolishing Labour’s army of real people Duffy by Duffy.
Frank Field is right: he should never have been let out of the attic.
The Slog 