Gordon Brown has always sought, and relished, the endorsement of prominent figures outside the Labour Government and politics. This has been seen as conferring a sense of legitimacy which the conventional political process does not.

That is the way to read his abortive talks with Sir Menzies Campbell about including a Liberal Democrat peer or two in his government. There has never been any prospect of a Lab/Lib coalition, the endlessly discussed project or “big thing” between Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown between 1994 and 1998, which eventually got nowhere. Sir Menzies has no interest in such a deal, either before or after an election. It would have split his party and offered a big opening to the Tories.

More interesting are Mr Brown’s motives. He has talked of creating a “government of all the talents”. At one level, this has been seen as implying leading young Blairites as well as Brownites. But his phrase has a much wider meaning.

Despite the Lib Dems’ attempts to stamp out speculation yesterday, Mr Brown’s allies are still talking about offering ministerial posts in the Lords to non-politicians. They could immediately be made peers. There are unlikely to be many and their value would be mainly symbolic. They would be technocrats rather than politicians. In addition, there has been talk of inviting businessmen and other outsiders to attend Cabinet committees on an occasional basis.

There is a long history of such non-political involvement. Lloyd George included the Geddes brothers in his post1918 Government, and Churchill put Sir John Anderson, a former senior civil servant, in his wartime Cabinet, and he became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1964 Harold Wilson recruited Lord Caradon and Lord Chalfont as Foreign Office ministers, and C. P. Snow, the novelist and scientist, became a peer and not very succesful junior technology minister.

Mr Brown has used businessmen and others to conduct reviews on important policy questions. This has partly been a means of broadening advice outside Whitehall, but, more importantly, as a means of providing the authority, or cover, of an outsider for measures that he would like to introduce.

The reviews conducted in 2001-02 by Sir Derek Wanless, the former clearing bank chief executive, into long-term health trends were used by Mr Brown as the public justification both for retaining a primarily taxpayer-funded NHS, and for the big increases in spending since then and a large rise in national insurance contributions. There have been well over 40 reviews since 1997, including everything from climate change and land-use planning to regulation, work incentives and institutional investment.

Similarly, Mr Brown has liked to be seen publicly with respected figures such as Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and now an adviser to him, as well as with Bill Gates of Microsoft.

The implicit assumption has been that such figures add weight to Mr Brown by transcending adversarial politics. This is meant to overcome the widespread public mistrust of party politicians. “Big tent” politics – also practised by David Cameron – is a recognition of the limits of tribal politics.

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