Chancellor Gordon Brown yesterday urged Labour to use his record on managing the economy as the springboard for a successful General Election campaign.

Mr Brown told the party's conference in Brighton that, in seeking to persuade voters that they can trust the Government in the post-Iraq conflict era, activists could still cite his economic record.

In his keynote speech, Mr Brown insisted the party and the country should give Prime Minister Tony Blair their full support in the difficult times generated by the Iraqi war.

But the Chancellor built his speech around the argument that his stewardship of the economy and his plans to increase its competitiveness and its capacity to generate wealth should be the centrepiece of the party's election campaign.

In what some commentators viewed as a dig at Alan Milburn, to whom Mr Blair has handed Mr Brown's traditional role in masterminding the party's election campaign, the Chancellor spoke of his ambition to build a progressive consensus on Britain's future that amounted to "much more than a set of individual policies announced by politicians".

Mr Milburn, addressing a Times/Populus fringe meeting a little later, warned Labour had to emphasise to voters what it would do for them during a third term rather than relying on "screaming louder and louder" about its track record.

He said Labour was right to tell people what it had delivered in the past, and he backed the Chancellor's demand to put his stewardship of the economy at the centre of that.

But he said that had to be combined with telling voters what another Labour government would deliver for them in the future.

In his speech, Mr Brown focused first on the Treasury's performance on fostering economic stability, adding: "We will never be complacent about stability. We must show at all times we have the discipline and strength to take the tough long-term fiscal and monetary decisions for Britain.

"Because, with the economy central to people's concerns at this next election, as at every election, that is the way to entrench and retain the trust of the people on the economy and pay for the much-needed reforms and investments in public services."

Mr Brown also stressed that, while the British economy must be modernised, he envisaged a society rooted firmly in Labour values.