Ukip Leader Nigel Farage was left red faced after seemingly being ignored by an immigrant worker while on the campaign trail.
Mr Farage, who was joined on the trip to the NICO hinge factory in Clacton, Essex, by MP Douglas Carswell, was introduced to Hungarian Ivan Lancsarevity.
He stood over Mr Lancsarevity rather awkwardly as he worked, while a reporter asked if the 62-year-old was a Ukip supporter.
Lancsarevity remained silent and smiled back politely.
Mr Farage has previously claimed that hearing foreign languages while travelling on trains made him feel awkward.
It later emerged Lancsarevity did not understand the questions posed to him due to his very limited English.
Speaking to reporters after the incident, Mr Lancsarevity admitted that he did "not speak English very well."
Colleagues from the factory said that he had lived in Colchester for five years.
The firm's manufacturing manager Steve Dalton confirmed the company needed to look overseas to fill a skills gap and on occasion had flown in potential employees from eastern Europe.
When Mr Farage was asked by journalists if he thought people like Mr Lancsarevity should be allowed to live and work in the UK, he replied: "One of the big problems we've got in engineering is a real shortage of young people studying engineering to go into trades such as this, which is regrettable.
"If there's no British person trained to do that job, then that says more about us than them."
