Much has been made of the ‘gaffe’ that the British prime minister made yesterday. Though a private conversation, picked up by an ‘open microphone’, Gordon Brown is truly apologetic to Mrs Gillian Duffy. But my question is: who is Sue?

In the conversation Brown is heard asking: ’Should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?’ His aide replies, ’I don’t know, I didn’t see.’ Brown then replies, ’Sue’s, I think. Just ridiculous.’ You can get the transcript elsewhere on the web. So my question is who is Sue? One of his aides? Is she going to take the full brunt of Brown’s known and reported fury? And why has the media not picked up on this? Poor Sue! And poor Mrs Duffy. And poor Mr Brown.

Again a day where policy is not discussed or debated and we are focussed on something else. It is known that what a politician says publicly is different from what they say in private, most of the time. We should not be surprised. I wonder what else is being said when open microphones are not around. Oh to be a fly on the wall!