PM urges voters 'think long-term'

In interviews recorded during his visit to Uganda, Mr Brown accepted that the Government was undergoing a difficult period due to events beyond its control.

But he insisted that the economic policies put in place over recent years would give Britain the strength to withstand turbulence around the world.

Mr Brown's comments come after his worst week as Prime Minister, in which it emerged that the Government had lent £25 billion to ailing bank Northern Rock and HM Revenue and Customs had lost the confidential personal details of 25 million people.

Opinion polls in the papers make grim reading for the PM, suggesting his reputation for economic competence and the ability to handle a crisis has been wiped out by the series of crises.

One survey, for the Mail on Sunday, even suggested that Labour would be doing better under Tony Blair, five months after he stepped down amid claims he had become an electoral liability for the party.

Mr Brown told the BBC: "We have events to deal with sometimes. These are decisions you have to make where you have to react to events in other parts of the world or events over which you have no control yourself.

"The question at the end of the day is, people should take a long-term view about what we are trying to achieve."

Mr Brown said that voters should take a broad view of the state of the economy: "The question for Britain is can we continue, as we have over these last 10 years, to steer a course of stability... Can we as an economy generally steer that course of stability?

"I think that the decisions we have taken over the last year, including our public sector pay policy, including bearing down heavily on inflation, put us in a position where we should be able, with the right long-term decisions, to withstand some of the turbulence that is coming from the rest of the world."