Two poor students were going into the UCS building to get hold of a book. Little did they know that the hapless Eastern Region Labour machine were lurking for them. Worried about the average age of the audience they grabbed these two hapless students who were most definitely not Labour supporters, pinned rosettes to them and told them to stand where the TV cameras would pick them out.

All rather stupid. Even more stupid when one of them is going to put in an official complaint.

It seems that Nick Robinson has also rumbled the fraud that was Gordon Brown’s visit to Ipswich, show casing the sort of tough questions that our Prime Minister is trusted with:

Q1: Can you tell us what you would most like to celebrate?
Q2: Why has Labour not said more about its achievements?
Q3: What can be done to build community relations?
Q4: What would you do to help people with disabilities?

My favourite of all, though, was: “Will you come back to Ipswich when you win the general election?”

Michael Crick also did not think much of the questions openly laughing at them and at one point coming out with the sarcastic comment “Oh yes, that was a tough one.”

In Ipswich members of the public (OK, Tory activists) had to lie about being Labour activists to get in to Gordon’s meet the people farce.

I thought Ipswich was one of the wealthier Labour parties, couldn’t they have given a generous donation to the national party so that the mad Scotsman wouldn’t come by?

Both Ben Gummer and Ipswich Spy have it wrong, the problem with Gordon Brown’s visit was not the fact that it was publicly funded (well not entirely the problem), but the fact that it blended the political campaigning in a marginal seat (and marginal ward) together with an official visit.  So the speed limits being broken and the publicly funded outriders made sense when visiting the airmen but not when going campaigning and going to BBC Suffolk.

It was the blending of the two together, or at least blending them together so blatantly, which was so wrong.  But that’s been endemic at least since Chris Mole became an MP.