Gordon Brown will fire the starting gun this week for a general election campaign that could run for six months. He will outline a programme of populist measures in the Queen’s Speech and challenge David Cameron to support them.

The Prime Minister is to emphasise his determination to carry on governing with a political programme designed to exploit Labour’s differences with the Conservatives on health, education and the economy. He will use Wednesday’s speech to reveal plans to provide free care at home for about 350,000 of the neediest people and to tear up “risky” bankers’ contracts.

Not all of the Bills can become law before the election but Labour intends to use them to “smoke out” the Conservatives on policy or put them on the spot. “It is the most political Queen’s Speech in 12 years,” a Cabinet minister told The Times.

Mr Brown will use the traditionally impartial setting of the Lord Mayor’s Banquet tonight to attack Conservative European policy. In his speech at Guildhall, he will say that Britain’s foreign policy must be “both patriotic and internationalist”.

Without referring to the Conservatives, he will add that the policy must exploit Britain’s strengths and defend its interests “not by retreating into isolation but by advancing in international co-operation”. The remarks will be seen as an attack on Mr Cameron’s decision to leave the centre-right grouping in the European Parliament to form an alliance with right-wing parties and to renegotiate parts of Britain’s relationship with the EU.

The Labour tactics were dismissed by the Tories last night. Eric Pickles, the party chairman, said: “It is the Conservatives who have been leading the positive policy agenda, from fighting poverty, reforming the banking system and getting a grip on the national debt to improving health and education for the British people.”

With Labour trailing heavily in the polls, Mr Brown is pinning his hopes on a long election campaign focusing on an expected economic recovery and public services. He has been buoyed by the party’s victory last week in the Glasgow North-East by-election.

The new legislation will give NHS patients the right to go private free of charge if they are not treated within 18 weeks, guarantees for parents and pupils of one-to-one tuition and free home treatment for the most frail.

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