Smash hit

Mr Brown shows that he has no intention of restraining his attack on Conservative plans to cut public spending. While insisting that the Government will meet its target of halving the fiscal deficit in five years, he suggests that economic growth will be the way to cut debt and borrowing without harming the public services.

He insists that because Britain has both publicly and privately been investing more than other countries in the industries of the future — low carbon, biotechnology, digital communications and the creative arts — it has “huge potential” for growth and jobs in the future. He predicts that much of this will come from overseas companies whose investment in Britain has held up despite the recession.

He adds: “When you have growth and jobs you have less debt and less deficit and more resources for the public services.”

Remarks from Mr Brown in a recent interview were interpreted as him being ready to leave the Government if he felt he was an obstacle to Labour’s advance. But he insists that he was saying only that he would not miss the “trappings” of power and no more than that.

“I am fighting for growth and jobs, better public services, a strong economy and society. I have got that work to do and it is ongoing.”

Mr Brown manages to get through the one-hour interview with The Times without once referring directly to David Cameron. Instead Mr Cameron and the Tory leadership are regularly dismissed as “our opponents”. But the Prime Minister leaves no doubt that he intends to use the recession and the argument between cuts and investment as planks in his election campaign.

“We had a strategy for tackling the recession. Our opponents had no strategy. They would still leave us in a position where perhaps the banks would not have been rescued and action would not have been taken to support businesses. There would be no extra public investment and no support for jobs,” he says.

“As far as I can see our opponents have no strategy for growth either. They have no strategy for new jobs, growth or the recession.

“The underlying policies needed to take Britain forward require deep thinking, co-ordinated action and require us to prepare in detail what we want to do for industries, employment and skills. That thinking is not there on the side of the Opposition.

“When I say they are a do-nothing party they had no plan to deal with the recession, not one genuine plan for taking us out. All other countries started to work on the same lines as Britain and the Conservatives were left isolated.”

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