"Immigration has become an important issue in this election and it is an issue that says a lot about how we feel about our country and what kind of country we want to live in. I want to play my part in building a Britain where we can all say: There is no more room for intolerance. There is no more room for racism. There is no room for bigotry or zenophobia. But there is more room for people who would like to come and live and work in this country.

 Immigrants have played a vital role in every single stage of the development of this nation: often times it has been immigration generated by the desires of our ruling classes to pull cheap labour from the rest of the world to benefit themselves. Every single step of every change, every progression, every success and every failure has been built with the foundation stones of immigration into these islands. To pretend otherwise is to utterly delude ourselves.

And most of the history of that immigration has included a net material, financial and social benefit to the economy of these islands. Including in the recent past. Including the most recent influx of immigration from new European Union nations. 

But even if there was not a penny of financial gain to be made, even if it was really, really costly, I would be proud to be part of a country that extended a welcoming and friendly hand to those from other lands who wished to move here to escape fear, violence, hunger, poverty, lack of economic opportunity or who just fancied a change of scenery.

I was remiss yesterday when I spoke to Mrs Duffy because I didn't adequately address the points she was making. She has real and genuine concerns, about pensions, public services, benefits, the national debt and they deserved more than my glib comments and certainly more than my dismissal of her afterwards. But immigration is NOT the cause of these problems: fear over immigration is  a smokescreen put up to prevent us dealing with the real issues. Mrs Duffy, and the rest of the electorate deserve an honest debate about immigration and its relationship to these other issues and I should have been more open and honest in picking up those issues with her rather than dismissing her views. My gut reaction of disliking the way some of that fear was expressed was however, I think the correct one although I regret the way I chose to express that dislike.

There are real issues to deal with when it comes to immigration: lets discuss how we change our approach to supporting the economies in the rest of the world so that more people can escape from the unpalatable choices of staying in situations of fear or poverty, or moving around the world to deal with bigotry and racism on the streets of Britain. Lets promote an international minimum wage so that jobs don't cross continents in pursuit of the lowest salaries and poorest conditions. But lets not carry on with the debate as it is happening now, with an unseemly race to the bottom over who can be toughest on the immigrants, who are all, as we all are, seeking merely to work for the best life they can for themselves and their families."

Of course, I know that Gordon Brown will say nothing of the sort tonight. After all, such a statement would require a major U-turn on just about every single policy in the Labour Manifesto. But this episode of "Bigotgate" is the first time ever I've even seen an inkling that Brown shares any of the ideals and beliefs that I would like to see put to the electorate. He didn't challenge her views adequately or seek to clarify them, because to do so would have revealed the hidden racism and bigotry of the Labour policy on immigration.  So in the imaginary leaders debate that I'm going to play in my head instead of watching the real one, I'm going to imagine Gordon Brown expressing more of those ideals and beliefs and take comfort from the idea of someone in the mainstream of political life not pandering to racism for a change.