Gordon Brown today admitted personal responsibility for Labour’s disastrous election results in a round of candid interviews, and confessed he felt chastened by the losses.

In BBC and Sky television interviews, Mr Brown tried to put across two competing messages - one that he understood the pain of the electorate and took responsibility for it, but two that he is in no mood to quit and is relishing the fight ahead.

The Prime Minister took the blame for Thursday's results in a way that he has often failed to do in the past. He had no excuses, he said. He had got it wrong over the 10p tax, he allowed speculation over an election last autumn to go on too long, he sometimes spent too much time on the detail and he had not paid enough attention to selling his policies.

Mr Brown said it was vital for the Government to show voters it understood their anxieties about rising prices and to convince them it had “an unequivocal and strong sense of direction” about how to get Britain through a tough economic period. He acknowledged that voters were feeling worried about their standard of living and said: “I feel the hurt they feel.”

But he made plain that did not expect a challenge to his leadership. There was a job to be done, he said. Would Labour recover? Yes it could and he was the man to lead it to that recovery.

He was relishing the fight against David Cameron, whom he again branded a "slick salesman". Mr Brown looked drawn and sombre. He admitted he worked hard, but not too hard.

He also accepted that he had problems being liked. "I am a private person in a public arena," he said. But he spoke also about the "real Gordon Brown" who came into politics to stand up for the "hard-working people" and promised to get out more to learn more about what people are feeling.

There was a defiance about him as well. “Of course we can recover from this position and I will tell you how. First of all by sorting outthe immediate problem with the economy and showing people we can come through, as we have in the past, very difficult economic times.

“Secondly by showing people we have a vision of the future that will carry the country - optimistically in my view - into its next phase.

“That is all about chances, opportunities, a fair deal for working families, helping people get onto the first rung of the housing ladder, helping people get opportunity in education - more universities and more colleges - the big building blocks for the future that we are putting in place.”

Several times Mr Brown spoke about the "economic plan" that the Government has ready to help with short-term difficulties.

“It is undoubtedly the case, going round the country, that there is a sense of hurt and a sense of feeling: ‘What is happening to my daily budget, what is happening to the bill at the supermarket and what is happening to the cost of living?’

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