British prime minister Gordon Brown today admitted he had made mistakes but promised “I will do better”.
Speaking at the Labour conference in Manchester which has been dominated by speculation about his leadership, Mr Brown denied his senior colleagues were plotting to replace him, insisting that he led “a pretty united Cabinet”.
He said that his handling of the turmoil in the financial markets of the past few days showed that he was the right man to lead the country through difficult economic times which required “wisdom and judgment”.
In an interview on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, he sought to brush off suggestions that his position was in peril, responding to the question of whether he expected still to be prime minister at Christmas with a firm: “Yes, of course.”
And he left no doubt that he has no plans to step aside for a new leader, as some critics have demanded, saying that it would be letting down the British people if he was to “bail out”.
Mr Brown used the interview to highlight his plans for a £1 billion package of free childcare for two-year-olds and to take a swipe at “irresponsibility” in the financial markets.
In comments calculated to appeal to the left of his party, he also criticised “unacceptable” features of the City bonus system that failed to take account of long-term performance, calling for new international rules governing rewards.
Mr Brown acknowledged that Britain was going through a “testing” time, with families struggling to cope with rising prices of food and fuel.
But he urged voters not to treat the upcoming election as a referendum on the performance of the Labour administration but as a choice between his party’s policy platform and that of the Conservatives, who he said had made the wrong judgments on issues like the nationalisation of Northern Rock and the ban on short-selling.
He told Andrew Marr: “You asked me had we made mistakes and I said yes.”
Asked if he accepted he personally had made mistakes, as well as the Government as a whole, he replied: “Yes”.
And he added: “Of course I always want to do better and I will do better.” Some commentators have predicted that Mr Brown will use his keynote speech to conference on Tuesday to apologise for mistakes made over the past year, when Labour has slumped from a dominant position in the polls to a deficit of as many as 28 points behind the Tories.
Asked if he had anything to say sorry for, he replied: “I think we were so focused on a number of different groups — families with children and pensioners - when we did the 10p change, we didn’t do enough for some of the other groups that have been affected. That has now been rectified.”
He insisted he was the right person to lead Britain through choppy economic waters: “I was Chancellor for 10 years. I am in a position to deal with the national and international events that are happening.
“I have got the experience to deal with these events and I think you have seen over the last few days we have been making the right decisions, sometimes ahead of other countries, because Alistair Darling and I have anticipated events as they were happening.
“I happen to think I am better prepared to deal with it than perhaps anyone, because you can’t deal with it by slogans and PR and good soundbites, you have to deal with it by the wisdom of the decisions you make.
“At every point in this crisis, the Conservative Party have made the wrong choices, the wrong judgments and the wrong decisions for the British people.”
He rejected suggestions that his Cabinet was divided over whether he should stay on.
“I think we have got a pretty united Cabinet,” he said. “The Cabinet are of the same mind. We would be letting people down if suddenly we walked away and said: ‘We bail out’.”
PA