Flock Rochdale

Poor Gordon Brown. 2 minutes 30 seconds in, Gillian Duffy says, in the context of claims for unemployment benefit --

You can't say anything about these immigrants because they'll say you're ... all these eastern Europeans coming here, where are they flocking from?

Presumably Gordon mis-heard "flocking", not used to the local accent, and disaster ensued.

Aside from the specific implications for Brown, one message from the incident is that immigration is the sleeper issue in the campaign. The people who'd like to talk about it are nervous about doing so. The moment she raised it, Brown's expectations for the next words seem to have influenced what he heard, or mis-heard.

UPDATE: Memories. There seems be a curse of Rochdale, as it is a seat Labour lost in 2004 "despite" the use of Rovian tactics. Now they've switched to an anti-core vote strategy!

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