Brown's gaffe spells disaster for Labour

The most significant revelation about Gordon Brown's faux pas (your report, 29 April) is not the fact that he's two-faced (only the most naive can expect that the public persona of a politician always matches his or her private thoughts) but that it exposes the totally stage-managed nature of all his contacts with the hoi polloi.

Here was a woman obviously pre-selected as a traditional Labour voter, and therefore safe for him to have a public conversation with. When she challenges him in a mild way he is shocked and doesn't know how to handle the situation. Back in the "privacy" of his car he lets fly at his minders for not screening his contacts enough. He expects to be exposed only to those members of the public guaranteed to fawn on him. This is the level of communication with the person on the street he believes he is entitled to.

MARY McCABE

Circus Drive

Glasgow

I'm not a Labour supporter but I think too much is being made of Gordon Brown's gaffe. Yes, the woman he was talking to was a grandmother, and yes, she was a Labour supporter, but she was expressing what some might see as intolerant views about immigration. He's lucky he wasn't overheard saying something much worse. If his opponents try to make political capital out of this, I can't wait to see them slip up too.

BRENDAN KENNEDY

London Road

Edinburgh

I can't understand why Gordon Brown considers himself as having sinned in calling Mrs Duffy "a bigoted woman" (your report, 29 April).

My dictionary defines a "bigot" as "a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own" and therefore one imagines that Mr Brown thought he was heaping high praise on the lady as being cast in a similar mould to himself.

IAN WHYTE

Gifford

Implicit in all the hoo-ha on Gordon Brown's gaffe regarding a senior citizen of Rochdale is the destruction of trust between the public and politicians.

Does anybody seriously believe that this comment from Mr Brown is a one-off disclosure as to what many MPs think of the electorate?

The expenses expos was, among everything else, a telling truth about the disrespect for the electorate that many MPs are capable of.

Mr Brown's comment, I bet, is echoed umpteen times during this election by many other political contenders, except their microphones are maybe more "comment-proof" and their aides switched-on enough to prevent their masters being caught out.

If anything, Mr Brown's gaffe just shows the man has a human side to him.

IAN JOHNSTONE

Forman Drive

Peterhead

For many years, people have believed you could put a red Labour rosette round the neck of a collie dog and working-class people would vote for it. After Gordon Brown called grandmother Gillian Duffy "bigoted" I would now imagine you couldn't pay working-class Labour supporters to vote for him.

JOHN CONNOR

David Henderson Court

Dunfermline

The debacle surrounding the Prime Minister's remarks remind me of a parallel incident many years ago.

Derek MacCullough, an elderly DJ – "Uncle Mac" to millions of children – presented a request show on Saturday morning programme on The Light Programme called Children's Favourites.

One morning after signing off, he was heard to mutter: "Thank God, that's got rid of the little b*****s for another week." Unfortunately, his microphone was still live and he was heard by horrified parents and children country-wide.

That was the end of his career. Is it too much to hope that the same fate will be visited upon "Uncle Gordon"?

RUSSELL COWE

By Newton

West Lothian