The Chancellor, making the most important speech of his life at the Labour conference in Manchester, intends to set out his political philosophy and his personal manifesto to become Labour’s sixth Prime Minister and create a “new Britain”.

In the face of polls casting doubt on his electability and fears that he may take Labour to the left, Mr Brown will promise to change the way that Britain is governed, ushering in a “new politics” to make Government more accountable to Parliament and public, while carrying forward new Labour’s modernisation crusade in an even more radical way. He will talk of a ten-year programme to meet Britain’s challenges.

Labour has climbed a huge mountain, he will say, but there are many more challenging ones still to scale. The next decade will be even more demanding than the last and Britain will need a “national mission” to help it to become the success story of the global economy.

Mr Brown’s apparently relentless march towards the top job continued yesterday with Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, becoming the latest Cabinet minister openly to back him. But he will be speaking against the background of the findings of a Times/BBC Newsnight focus group which raises doubts about his appeal to voters even among strong Labour supporters, and of a Populus poll for The Times that shows strong backing for a break with the Tony Blair era.

Mr Blair, for whom this party conference is his last as leader, declined several opportunities to endorse Mr Brown as his successor, although he made plain that he was not pulling back from any of the previous compliments that he had showered on the Chancellor. The Prime Minister has been trying desperately to stop the conference being dominated by leadership speculation and would have fallen at the first fence had he given his verdict on Mr Brown.

He suggested that the Cabinet was in agreement on steering clear of leadership issues and concentrating on policy.

That did not stop Mrs Beckett or Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, nailing their colours to the Chancellor’s mast. Mrs Beckett said: “I have always felt that Gordon was the person who would be a brilliant prime minister — was both most likely to succeed Tony and also should. As far as I am concerned it is Gordon Brown’s time.”

Today Mr Brown will say that the renewal of the party will be built on a flexible economy, reformed and personalised services, public and private sectors working together “so that we can truly deliver opportunity and security not just for some but for all.”

He will say: “New Labour will never retreat but positively entrench our position in the centre ground, in the mainstream as the party of reform — new Labour renewed, not just holding the centre ground but modernising it in a progressive way, too.”

He will add that Britain has always done best in peace and in war when its people have shared a national mission. “And Britain must have a mission today to define us for the generation ahead — to be the success story of the global economy, we must and will be No 1 in education.

“While some see politics as spectacle I see politics as service, because it is through service that you can make a difference and you can help people change their lives.”

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