Brown preparing for crucial speech

Mr Brown's crucial address to the party's annual conference in Manchester comes against the backdrop of calls for his removal by a handful of backbench critics, as well as opinion polls predicting near-wipeout for Labour at the next election.

Although the five-day gathering has seen little in the way of open dissent, commentators believe Mr Brown must deliver the speech of his life to win back genuine enthusiasm from grassroots activists and MPs.

He will seek to show his critics that the Government is taking action to aid the most disadvantaged families in Britain by unveiling schemes to provide every schoolchild with broadband Internet access at home and offer free part-time nursery care for two-year-olds.

The £300 million internet programme will pay for broadband connections, software and computers for the 1.4 million school-age children who do not currently have web access at home.

About one million households will be entitled to an Educational Technology Allowance voucher worth up to £700 when the three-year programme - paid for from savings from the Department for Schools budget - is rolled out from 2010/11.

Mr Brown has won a respite from challenges to his leadership during the course of the conference by positioning himself as the only person with the experience and judgment to take the right decisions on the current economic crisis.

He has won applause from unions and the Labour left by indicating he will take action to curb massive City bonuses and introduce stronger supervision of the banking sector. But many within the party believe that the truce may only be short-lived, with further resignations and a serious bid to oust him almost certain to follow if Labour loses the formerly safe seat of Glenrothes in a by-election in November.

The man seen as his most likely replacement, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, hailed the PM in his own conference speech on Monday as an "inspiration" and later insisted he was not seeking to take his job.

But the BBC later reported that he had been overheard apparently comparing himself to Michael Heseltine - the leadership rival who helped bring about Margaret Thatcher's demise - and suggesting that he had toned down his speech to avoid outshining the Prime Minister. According to the BBC, the Foreign Secretary said: "I couldn't have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment."