Gordon Brown put Tony Blair on notice today that he expects to be handed the keys to No 10 this time next year, even though there has been no word yet from the Prime Minister as to when he will be ready to retire.

In a speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton, the Chancellor paid repeated tribute to Mr Blair for his achievements in transforming Labour and for winning it an historic third term in office this May.

Then he claimed for himself the task of "renewing new Labour" after Mr Blair's departure from politics. Delegates were left in no doubt that Mr Brown, anointed heir apparent by a string of senior ministers over the past few days, has no intention of letting Mr Blair serve out anywhere close to a full term.

The Chancellor will even undertake a grand tour of the UK over the next year to get to know his future subjects a bit better – setting himself up for a smooth succession in 12 months’ time.

But political analysts said that Mr Brown’s clearly implied timetable for a handover next year could backfire, if Mr Blair is determined not to name a date.

"Let me say to conference: Tony Blair deserves huge credit not just for winnng three elections but for leading the Labour Party for more than a decade," Mr Brown said. "And in the same way he deserves credit for leading us through these difficult and challenging years, he also deserves credit for now asking us and challenging us as a party to begin to plan ahead.

"And because the renewal of new Labour will be as profound as challenge, as rigorous a task and as great an achievement as the creation new Labour, I will – in the next year – visit every region and nation of our country, with you I want to listen, hear and learn to discuss the economic, social and constitutional changes we need to build for the future."

Philip Webster, Times Political Editor, suggested that Mr Brown may have blundered by pushing Mr Blair too hard on the succession, even if a handover next year still looks the most likely option.

"Whatever Mr Blair has said, he has not said that he is going next year," Webster said, "So some of the Blairites around the place are saying that Gordon has almost got carried away with all this adulation this week and he is pushing a little too hard.

"He becomes an immediately lame duck if he says I’ll go this time next year, so Mr Brown really shouldn’t be pushing him to name the day because Mr Blair might just turn around and say, ‘No I’m not going next year. I’m staying for two or three years.’"

With no real alternative seen to a Brown leadership, the Chancellor’s speech was carefully followed by delegates for hints about the party’s future direction under him: will it - as many party activists and union members still want – return to its socialist roots on the Left?

But while promising that Labour would strive to find a new moral purpose, Mr Brown made clear that a ‘renewed new Labour’ will be as unremittingly new Labour as Mr Blair promised before the election. He spoke of a "progressive" party dedicated to reform and declared that Labour must "not just inhabit the centre ground, but dominate it".

"When the Tories tell you the next election will be old Labour versus new Conservatives, tell them the truth," the Chancellor said. "The next election must and will be New Labour renewed against a Conservative Party still incapable of renewal.

"When they tell you that at the next election we will abandon reform in Britain, tell them the Labour Party was founded so that by our Labour values we could reform Britain, that the great Labour governments of the last century were great because they were reforming progressive governments that transformed Britain, and that the only future of the Labour Party is as the party of reform."

Mr Brown took the opportunity to remind delegates of his record of delivering economic growth and stability in his eight years at the Treasury. Despite his recent admission that growth forecasts might need to be revised downwards, Mr Brown said that Britain was unique in successfully riding out a series of global economic storms. But he warned that record highs in the price of oil were putting economic stability at risk.

In an echo of Mr Blair's famous commitment to "education, education, education", the Chancellor identified Britain's "economic goal now and for the future" as "to become the world's number one power in education". Mr Brown also compared the fight to provide opportunity for all children with the historic struggles to abolish slavery, end child labour, provide universal education and create the NHS.

"When it is asked, centuries from now, who were the people who rid this country of child poverty, who gave every child the best start in life, let it be said it was this Labour Party, this Labour Government, this generation

of dedicated men and women who led the way," he said.

Although Mr Brown received a three-minute standing ovation after his speech – with Mr Blair jumping up first to start the clapping off – reaction to his speech from the floor was muted and the ovation itself appeared to lack spontaneity.

One activist even suggested that it was bland. "It was a speech by a prime minister-in-waiting and it was difficult to disagree with any of it," said Peter Chowney, a party activist from the Hastings and Rye constituency party, as the clapping subsided.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, was less polite. He said: "Gordon Brown told the Labour Party conference he was brought up to tell the truth. If this is the case then why was there no mention in his speech of the downgraded growth forecasts, massive budget deficit, record borrowing and the tax rises to come?

"Instead of masquerading as the leader in waiting he should get his own shop in order. Gordon Brown knows the longer he stays at the Treasury; the more his chickens are coming home to roost."

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