Gordon Brown today insisted there was no relevance in the fact that he and Tony Blair are making important public appearances at exactly the same time today.

The Chancellor is making a major speech in Edinburgh to call for action to tackle the underlying causes of poverty in developing countries.

But his call for international action threatens to be overshadowed by Mr Blair, who is holding his monthly press conference at 10 Downing Street at precisely the same time as the Chancellor speaks, and is expected to touch on many of the same themes.

Mr Brown said on GMTV: "The timing of speeches doesn’t matter. It’s the shared agenda, the common purpose. It’s an agreed agenda of the British Government and governments around the world."

Mr Brown is calling on the rich world to match its generosity to the victims of the Asian tsunami with long-term assistance to the world’s poorest countries.

He will call for a "Marshall Plan for the developing world", combining massively increased aid, fairer trade rules and debt write-offs to transform the prospects of poor countries, particularly in Africa.

Asked about reports that he was being sidelined from election planning, Mr Brown said: "I don’t think that’s material at all. I’m getting on with the job that I’m doing, which is Chancellor of the Exchequer."The important thing is that this is an agreed agenda."

Mr Blair denied last night that there was anything strange about the timing of his conference - announced just yesterday - clashing with the Chancellor’s long-scheduled speech.

"It’s not bizarre at all," he told ITV News. "There’s an awful lot going on at the moment, and I shall be speaking a bit about Africa as well."

But Westminster insiders speculated he was trying to steal some thunder from Mr Brown, who has already taken centre-stage by leading a drive to help victims of the Boxing Day tsunami with a debt relief deal, while the Prime Minister was on holiday in Egypt.

The Chancellor’s former spin chief today criticised the timing of the Prime Minister’s press conference. And he accused Mr Blair of a "major error of judgment" for not cutting short his holiday to deal with the tsunami disaster.

Charlie Whelan said ministers’ diaries would have been worked out weeks ago and the timing was "astonishing".

"I expect that Gordon Brown’s office and Gordon Brown will be quite shocked that they decided to hold the press conference at exactly the same time as a speech that was planned months ago," he said.

Mr Whelan told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "Perhaps it is because Tony Blair was on holiday at the time of this terrible tragedy and disaster and inexplicably decided to stay on holiday.

"I think perhaps realising his major error of judgment he has now decided he needs to get in on the act, be seen to be doing things and panicked slightly, not quite realising how much damage that does to the relationship between Gordon Brown and himself."

Mr Whelan also defended Mr Brown’s decision to write his own Labour manifesto, saying he had been frozen out of the general election campaign.

"He has been cast aside and Mr (Alan) Milburn has been put in charge," he said.

"Inevitably he will feel a little upset." Mr Whelan said a number of people at Number 10 had never accepted Mr Brown’s position and had consistently sought to undermine himself.

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