Watch the embedded video, or at least the last 90 seconds, in this Weekly Standard blogpost and you will see one of the most amazing unforced errors in the history of English-speaking politics. Gordon Brown after pretty well handling an encounter with a 66-year woman, a lifelong Labour voter, calls her a “bigoted woman” on tape. “A disaster of his own making,” writes Lance Price, blogging in the left-wing Guardian. Price compares the prime minister with his Labrador and virtually begs him to rescue the “dozens of Labour candidates” who are now in trouble.

What’s puzzling about the exchange is that the woman says nothing bigoted. It seems that left politicians seem to believe that voters who are troubled by crime or immigration must be bigoted. But there are perfectly good and non-bigoted reasons to be troubled by crime and the effects of immigration. The Gordon Brown who talked with the woman on the street seemed to understand that. The Gordon Brown recorded speaking in his Jaguar being driven away did not.