Gordon Brown found himself face to face with parental anger about the state of schools yesterday.
As he left the Centrepoint building in central London, he was heckled by 31-year-old company director Ben Butterworth.
'Gordon, can you tell me why my children can't get into any of the state schools of our choice in our area....hello Gordon!' he called out.
Mr Brown hurried to his car. Later Mr Butterworth, of Clapham, South London, used Twitter to express his frustration at being unable to get a place for his four-year-old son at a 'decent' local state school.
Mr Brown, addressing a 'People's PMQ' event in London, explained: 'I am happy to take questions at a public meeting, but I was actually on my way from one meeting to another.'
It was in stark contrast to Mr Brown's rose-tinted first day of campaigning, when Labour Party minders were accused of surrounding him with a 'rent-a-mob' hand-picked crowd of the Labour faithful who cheered as he boarded a train at St Pancras Station.
Yesterday, it was real voters whom Mr Brown encountered as he left the Centrepoint building in Central London.
At first it looked as though history might repeat itself along the lines of clashes from previous elections, most memorably when Tony Blair was buttonholed at a hospital entrance by Sharon Storer who demanded answers as to the treatment of her cancer-suffering partner.
But yesterday's attempt at direct democracy was not nearly so successful, as Mr Brown simply hurried to his car without responding, leaving Mr Butterworth standing on the pavement without an answer.
Yet within minutes, Mr Butterworth had found another way to get his message across, 'blogging' about the encounter using his mobile phone to update his Twitter and internet sites with details of what had happened.
He wrote: 'I might be in the news later chasing Gordon Brown to his limo asking why I couldn't get my boy into a decent state school. He didn't answer.'
Well of course he did not answer, he could not. The coward lacked the courage to debate with one of the hard working families that he claims to be working for. The man who claims to be best placed for the job, failed to do his job in answering one of the people who pay his wage.
Courage, a word Gordon scribbles about in books and yet has no understanding of what so ever. Lets hope that Mr Butterworth does not go for a walk in the woods or get mistaken for a terrorist whilst using the tube train....
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2 people have spoken:
YEP!!
PoliticsHome adore him. By the way, your verification is corrupt. I had to preview before I saw the letters.
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