Gordon Brown denied being a ditherer today and insisted that he would have come down against holding a snap general election even if the opinion polls had not suddenly turned against him last week.

At a Downing Street press conference dominated by the no-election fiasco, the Prime Minister admitted that he had examined the polls before making his decision on Saturday not to go to the country, which prompted accusations from the Conservatives that he had "bottled it".

"Yes, I did consider holding an election. Yes, I looked at it," Mr Brown said. "My first instinct, if I were honest with all of you, was that I wanted to get on with my job of putting my vision of what the future of the country was to the people of the country - and deliver on it before there was ever an election.

"But I did listen to people. I looked at what people were saying. I heard from candidates in marginal seats - those candidates in marginal seats were telling us we would win the election.

"I happen to believe we would win at any time. I made my decision on this basis: I wanted more time to set out my vision for the future of the country. We had had a summer dealing with issues from foot and mouth to floods to terrorism to economic and financial crisis.

"I had not yet had a chance to put forward my vision about health, about housing, about education, about the future of our economy and prosperity generally, and that is why I made the decision I did."

Asked if he could have gone the other way had the results of a News of the World poll suggested a 100-set majority instead of the loss of 50 marginal seats, Mr Brown replied: "I would have made the same decision. I just told you, it's what I wanted to do to show the British people that I could deliver."

He also rejected a suggestion that he was a "ditherer" and that the same instinct which made him back off from confrontation with Tony Blair for the Labour leadership was displayed when he backed off from the brink of a snap election.

"I did the right thing when I wanted Tony Blair to be the leader of the Labour Party - I have always said that that was the right decision. I also did the right thing this weekend," he said.

The Downing Street press conference was brought forward, apparently to signal that the Prime Minister was getting back to business. This afternoon, he is due to make a statement to the Commons about his Government's policy on Iraq.

This evening Mr Brown is expected to address the Parliamentary Labour Party - a traditional engagement for the party leader when the Commons returns from its summer break.

Election fever reached its height in the last week of September, as Labour’s poll lead soared to 11 percentage points during its party conference in Bournemouth.

But surveys last week, after the Tories unveiled plans to slash inheritance tax and stamp duty, showed the Labour advantage significantly narrowed - or even eliminated altogether

Mr Brown’s final decision came ahead of a survey - by ICM for the News of the World - putting Mr Cameron’s party six points ahead in 83 marginal seats, on course to depose 49 Labour MPs and force a hung Parliament.

Asked whether the situation had been handled well, Mr Brown replied: "I think your weekend has been better than mine."

He said of the decision: "I could have made it earlier, perhaps I should have made it earlier, but I decided I would make my statement at the end of the party conference season."

He said he would now be pressing ahead with his programme for constitutional reform, including the creation of citizens’ juries, to enable wider public consultation on local issues. "This is a major agenda that I don’t think is lightly to be dismissed as something for a day, or for a week, or a few months. This is an agenda for long-term change in the British constitution."

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said today that the "charade" had been conducted entirely in the interests of the Labour Party and accused Mr Brown of reverting to "the worst of Blairism".

"It is deeply, deeply damaging (to him) and more than that, it is deeply, deeply damaging to politics," he said. The Lib Dems were to launch a bid today for legislation to strip prime ministers of the right to pick election dates by imposing four-year fixed-term parliaments.

Tony Lloyd, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said that Mr Brown had to demonstrate to the public he was a "competent, trustworthy Prime Minister" rather than a "master tactician". "What Gordon Brown’s got to do is get back to what he was doing so well over the summer, demonstrating that he can provide leadership for the country," he said.

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