Yesterday was calamitous for Gordon Brown. How bad it turns out to be for the Labour Party is a matter I leave to those who know how to measure these things. But whatever the case, the episode of the open mic, unlucky as it may have been for Brown, symbolizes the wider disaster it has become that the party is being led by him in this general election campaign - Labour's own choice, unfortunately, through inertia or failure of nerve.
When all that has been said, however, one should try to keep a grip on some elementary truths about interpersonal conduct and the public domain. This is from Andrew Rawnsley:
Wearing two faces is not, of course, a hypocrisy unique to Brown.
It is not even a hypocrisy; or else it is an all but universal one. Everyone who's ever had a critical view of someone else or about something they've said or done, and shared that view with another but not with the person concerned, has at some time practised it. And who hasn't? It might even be said that it's an inevitable product of the habits of (a) civility and politeness, when combined with (b) the well-known human tendency to confide in others. It is hard to imagine a viable social life that dispensed with either of these things. If Brown is a hypocrite, it's not because he spoke one way to Mrs Duffy and then another way about her once he was in the car.
