Benedict Brogan

Gordon Brown admitted mistakes which contributed to the financial crisis (Photo: Reuters)

One sign that things are not going to plan is when a party leader has to clarify what he’s said before he’s actually said it. Gordon Brown did just that a short while ago when he gave a clip to the broadcasters to explain his plea of guilty admission that he must share some of the blame for the financial crisis. Although it’s been reported this morning, Mr Brown’s words won’t actually be broadcast until tomorrow night. The betting is that Mr Brown was pushed before the cameras after Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson came under pressure to interpret his words at their morning press conference. The line seems to be that he has said it all before. Has he? Really?

Like the Twitter guy last week, it is sometimes small things that get the hyenas into a frenzy. By itself, the PM’s point that he should have ignored the City’s pleas for less regulation may not be huge, but remember this is the politician who kept telling us this was a global crisis made in America, and who made so much of his tripartite regulatory model. Central to his economic argument for the campaign is that he was not responsible for getting us into the mess, but he is responsible for getting us out of it. Mr Brown’s admission is a gift to the other leaders for tomorrow’s debate (although aren’t economic issues are being reserved for the BBC’s turn in a fortnight?) Even if we aim off for the hysteria of the other parties’ response as the day goes on, this is an own goal for Mr Brown.

Thanks to the relentless Paul Waugh for bringing to our attention the Labour party election broadcasts you won’t see in England. The Monday night film I mentioned a few days ago – the one with Sean Pertwee trudging through a blighted wasteland that turned out to be Yorkshire – was not screened in Scotland or Wales. Citizens in those blessed corners of the kingdom were treated instead to more traditional ‘Tories will murder the first born’ propaganda.

The Scottish Labour one is particularly interesting because it reflects how Gordon Brown sees politics and the Tories. most of the footage is from the 70s and 80s, and all the old saws are trotted out: mines closed, industries shut down, striking nurses in wimples, helmeted policemen cracking heads of poll tax rioters, stills of Maggie and Norman Tebbit looking grim, “they even took away our school milk”, and claims that should be investigated by the ASA: Tories “want to cut tax credits and child trust funds”. It could have been made by Red Gordon in his Thatcher hating days.

The Welsh one is marginally more upbeat, thanks to sunlit uplands guff from the great Rhodri Morgan. Labour in Scotland can’t say much about its more recent triumphs because all it’s achieved is to turn the birthplace of capitalism into a welfare addict run by the irrepressible Alex Salmond and his SNP (who were supposed to be killed off by devolution, come to think of it).

There’s no point in getting too exercised about negative campaigning. It’s what happens in elections. In the interests of fairness though, it’s worth reminding friends in Scotland who might be seduced by Mr Brown’s crude Thatcher baiting of a more recent historical episode:

A colleague points out that Twitter has turned itself to the task of collating the Labour candidates who have mysteriously omitted to mention Gordon Brown in their election leaflets. They are being collected under the hashtag #GordonWho. Guido Paul has found the one candidate still willing to show photos of the PM: Mr Brown himself.

You can do more with less, David Cameron told us towards the end of an interminable manifesto launch that was in danger of proving the opposite. If this Parliament has gone on too long, and this campaign is beginning to feel eternal, then pity those trapped in a marquee dropped in the middle of the derelict Battersea power station this morning. The only thing worse would have been to be in Birmingham being pelted by Labour zealots. I wonder who thought it would be a neat idea to get half the Shadow Cabinet to make a speech, then get Dave to repeat what they said? Nice sausage sandwiches though.

That’s the moan out of the way, and a fairly trivial one too. Manifesto week is always the worst of the campaign, not least because there are no surprises to mitigate the ordeal. The parties want to put on a show, and we endure it for you. So, as yesterday with Labour, cue videos and rented audiences and staged shows of diversity and youthness. The Shadow Cabinet was packed into tiered seats either side of Dave, but diluted like barley water to tone down the white male thing. Chris Grayling for instance was wedged between two attractive (presumably heterosexual) young things. (BTW Dave wore a purple tie – is there something about that colour that attracts politicians?)

The book though is all that matters, and it is a book, part policy Bible, part Rough guide with little pen profiles of places you have always wanted to visit but haven’t got to yet – Freiburg, Sweden, New York, Aberystwyth. “The party of one nation is back where it belongs,” William Hague said (where, in an industrial wasteland?) and it invites you to read this book and believe. The book itself is the invitation – ‘Invitation to join the government of Britain’ it says on the blue cover – and it has been sent by email, Facebook, Twitter and carrier pigeon to 500,000 people in the hope that they in turn will send it on like some kind of unstoppable chain letter. It’s central thrust is about the Big Society, or as Oliver Letwin put it to me earlier, “it’s about a small state trying to create a bigger society to enable people to take power themselves.” In its detail it is surprisingly traditionally Conservative in its outlook: self-reliance, family, community, localism are all values the Tories lost when they got sucked into the monster centralised state of the past 30 years.

Today was also about David Cameron. He made a long speech, too long, and so reminded us that when he is scripted he is less effective. It was later when he let rip with a bit of Angry Dave about the substantial numbers of people who have yet to express a view – the black hole of ‘don’t knows’, about how “the politicians have been treating the public like mugs for about 40 years” that he brought the occasion to life. More please. Not less.

Adam Boulton has bitten back after being called a Tory by Gordon Brown. We haven’t heard from Nick Robinson yet, but he was singled out by the Dear Leader as well. As for my chum Graeme Wilson from the Sun, at least he had the good grace to smile when the Labour crowd booed him. Watching the scenes from Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital Palace of the People, it was tempting to wonder why the whole set up looked familiar: the smiling prosecutor; the mob baying for vengeance; the guilty men herded into a pen and made to listen to speeches before answering for their crimes before the people. But of course! It’s what Stalin did, which is appropriate given that his leadership style was compared to that of the Soviet dictator by Lord Turnbull when he was Cabinet Secretary. And Private Eye has been running the Stalin motif since GB became PM.

Actually, the comparison is in bad taste, of course it is. But there was something mildly threatening about the way Mr Brown told the crowd “it’s not a fair press, at least it’s a fair audience”. In private he is full of anger at the way newspapers have turned against him. He was angry about his treatment during the expenses row, and furious at the way the papers covered the bullying allegations. His charge is that we don’t take issues seriously and are too distracted by the trivia of personalities. What he has to say about Rupert Murdoch doesn’t bear printing. Perhaps if he had spent less time using the press to do his dirty work, we might not face what suddenly looks like it will be an angry campaign.

Put aside the epilepsy-inducing strobe backdrop, Labour’s manifesto launch is achieving its purpose. Gordon Brown  is performing at the upper end of his range, the Team Brown motif is working – visually at least – and his speech avoided the bombast and clunkery he is prone to. People outside the village tuning in for a snippet on the News at 10 will see nothing to horrify. Not that there isn’t plenty to pluck apart on the visuals. Guido Paul was first out of the traps to point out the manifesto’s sunlight cover could have been lifted from pre-war Conservative posters (he’s also clarified that the young woman who introduced him is none other than Ellie Gellard, Twitter’s ubiquitous BevaniteEllie).

Mr Brown even had an answer to the question being pushed by the Tories about Cabinet rules barring the use of an NHS hospital for a political event. The Prime Minister said the building was still owned by the builders, which smacked of sophistry: which builder? How much did the builder charge? If the builder did not charge has Labour declared the value of the donation to the Electoral Commission? Answers please.

As for the content, Mr Brown said Labour was ‘in the future business’ and added: “Under my leadership we will always be in the future business building a future fair for all.” Expect that line to be repeated over and over. It does of course invite questions about the past, namely what are we to make about Mr Brown’s record over 13 years? He wants a choice between two parties, not a referendum on Labour, but that choice has to be informed by what we know about his record of public service reform, on taxes, on managing the economy. The manifesto talks the Blairite talk about setting the public sector free, yet he was the one who fought tooth and nail against foundation hospitals, against academies, against tuition fees. “There should be no limit on what the best of the public sector can do,” he said, but he was the one who throughout Labour’s time in office defied his own Prime Minister to set limits on what the public sector could do.

One line that stayed with me too: “Our plan for the future: you the British people will be better off.” How can this possibly be true. I promise not to bang on about DEBT! again but surely the truth is the opposite? For reasons that we all understand – a collective effort needed to get us out of the whole we are in – we will most certainly not be better off, in particular if Labour get in.

The questions deployed the old trick of using the audience as a crutch or a stick to hit the media with. So uncomfortable questions could be deflected by turning to the home crowd. A final thought in haste: my colleague Rosa Prince asked if Labour was now the party of the middle classes. Mr Brown answered: “We are the party of middle and modest incomes in this country.” So a future not fair for all, but for some. Higher earners and higher rate payers, you are on your own. Mr Brown has cut you off. But then you knew that.

This is manifesto week. Labour in Birmingham today, the Tories in London (apparently) tomorrow, Lib Dems Wednesday. Last night the Tories were trying to stir trouble to spoil Labour’s launch, Labour will try to return the favour tonight. And alongside all this we will get ourselves excited about the main event on Manchester on Thursday, when the leaders meet to debate and we can consider the quality of Dave’s quiff or Gordon Brown’s pout their policies.

What we will not hear much about though, to judge by the way this campaign has gone so far, is debt, the black hole that deepens with every deficit. Or DEBT! as it rightly should be written every time. It’s as if the parties and leaders have decided to ignore the issue for the duration, for fear of putting off the voters. From Labour this is no surprise. Gordon Brown has no interest in being interested in the issue, and even considers it an economic virtue, a price worth paying to save us from economic collapse. To address DEBT! and what must be done about it would be to draw attention to his record of spending recklessness dating back to the good times of 2002-3.

The Tory silence is equally unsettling. It was George Osborne who put DEBT! on the table as the biggest issue confronting the nation. His message that DEBT! presents a clear and present danger to the future of the economy was the strategic call that put the Tories on the right side of the argument long before others had spotted it. When it was not popular or politically convenient to do so he held back from making promises of tax cuts that were not funded. He argued that spending needed to be cut back, and promised that spending would take 80pc of the strain, with tax rises limited to 20pc of the effort.

I have argued before that his commitment has been undermined by the party’s decision to exclude health and international defence spending from the search for savings. And that the Shadow Cabinet has shown little sign of having internalised the painful choices each member will have to make. Some have instead been scattering promises of spending increases. The worst offender, of late, has been David Cameron himself who recently tried to buy off the grey vote by promising to leave alone all those sumptuous entitlements dreamed up by Gordon Brown – the winter fuel allowance, the free TV licence, the pension credit – regardless of whether they are justified or affordable or going to the right people.

For the past 10 days the Tories have focused on their plans to repeal a portion of Labour’s planned NI rises, helped by a convoy of business leaders doing what they do when power shifts from one side to the other (do you remember the City pulling the plug on Labour when it put NI up last time? No? Neither do I). It’s been a cracking operation that even Mr Brown admits in private has been a bad story for Labour. Couple that with a great PR hit for Dave’s admirable national volunteering scheme, and Friday night’s announcement on a limited transferable allowance for committed couples, and you can see why the Tories are the critics’ choice for the Best Campaign So Far award.

The consequence has been a campaign that quibbles over £6bn here or £12bn there or whether a £150/year tax cut can be funded easily, and whether this kind of chicken feed can be found easily. DEBT! I just have to mention it again. £920 billion and counting, according to this handy debt clock. That’s nearly £15,000 for every citizen. And the total is heading north of £1.5 trillion faster than you can say efficiency savings.

So in the weeks to come we need to hear a lot more about DEBT! and what the parties propose to do about it. It is no use saying the cuts already planned are going to be eye-watering. Or that ring-fencing the NHS is still going to mean pain for the health service.

At the moment the only place talking sense about the problem is the Treasury, where there is private bemusement at the lack of serious thinking on all sides. Of course the mandarins preferred to put VAT up rather than NICs, but putting options to ministers is what they do: in the end Alistair Darling and his friend who tried to do him in chose the NICs route. What they are also telling ministers, and George Osborne, is that there are only three sure-fire ways to close the deficit and stop the runaway DEBT! train: reduce the wage bill, scrap procurement projects or cut transfer payments. We will be cheating the voters if this campaign says nothing about what must be done.

Labour have just released a party political broadcast that will go out tomorrow. It’s called The Road Ahead and when I first saw the greyness of the opening and what I thought were smudges on the face of the actor Sean Pertwee I thought this was about to be a send up of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, with a depiction of a Tory future full of ash and cannibals. But it turns out it’s Yorkshire, as the setting for be a straightforward ‘keep hold of nurse’ bit of propaganda, all about putting recovery at risk if you “change teams”, complete with the unsubtle visual of a crossroads with a downhill right turn to a Tory zig-zag. Pertwee plays an Everyman rehearsing the glories of Gordon Brown’s G20 triumph and how he saved the world from a “scary time” by “showing us the way” and how the Tories would put it all at risk. The word “resolve” makes several appearances, which will be Mr Brown’s personal and party motif for the campaign. We can sneer at the cliche of it, but outside Westminster this kind of thing has the potential to be effective.

Endorsement of the weekend. The Sunday Times also has an entertaining piece by Camilla Long describing her pursuit of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative candidate in Somerset North-East. The conceit is that she can’t find him because he’s being hidden by the powers-that-be who fear his particular style is a walking reminder that all Dave’s talk of change hasn’t been embraced everywhere (his sister Annunziata by contrast, who is standing in the seat next door, is quietly impressive ). The piece saves the best for last, quoting their mother Lady Rees-Mogg:

“How’s it going? Do people like him? “Well, he’s got quite a weird reputation,” she says. “He’s outspoken and … unusual. But he and Annunziata like sticking their heads above the parapet.” She sighs. “Can you imagine if they both got in?” “

With endorsements like that…

Quote of the weekend: apart from his ludicrous suggestion that the Tory tax break for commitment is ‘taking money away from children’*, the best line from Gordon Brown’s Sunday Times interview is about David Cameron. Remember, Mr Brown is from the Labour tradition for which consorting with the enemy is anathema. Asked if there is anything about Mr Cameron he admires, he says: “I don’t know him as a human.” It’s an arresting phrase, but this is how he sees Conservatives: as less than human.