The chancellor is building bridges with several prominent Liberal Democrat MPs, including Sir Menzies Campbell, the leadership contender, and Vince Cable, the party’s Treasury spokesman.
Brown’s move may be seen as a sign that the chancellor is concerned about the challenge of David Cameron, the new Tory leader. He is said to be keen to begin publicly attacking Cameron but Downing Street is reluctant to do so.
In a move to set out his position in areas of traditional Tory strength, Brown yesterday issued a call for a special “British day” to celebrate patriotism. In a speech to the Fabian Society, he also warned against cutting the amount of Nazi and second world war history taught to schoolchildren.
Meanwhile, the four Lib Dem leadership candidates began the campaign yesterday with speeches to about 500 party activists at a meeting in London.
The exploratory talks with the Lib Dems were confirmed by Cable, who said he had met Brown last month. “Gordon is quite open about finding common ground and knows we could be quite important players in the next parliament,” he said. “It was a tentative way of exploring what the common ground is.”
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Brown’s office sought to play down the significance of the meeting. An aide said the chancellor and Campbell spoke regularly and were close because of sometimes travelling back to their constituencies in Scotland together.
There is no suggestion Brown is trying to broker a formal pact to keep out the Tories should the Lib Dems hold the balance of power at the next election. But colleagues will see his move as an attempt to win support for his left-of-centre agenda, what he has called the “progressive consensus”.
“There is a fair degree of common ground,” Cable said. “I don’t think we should be leaning to one side or the other, but make clear that there are circumstances where we can work together.”
He added that he approved of Brown’s overall economic approach and “modest degree of distribution” of wealth.
The meeting was at the chancellor’s behest. Brown had planned a trip to Israel to promote an economic package to aid the Middle East peace process; his spokesman said he wanted to build a “cross-party consensus” on the issue. In the end he had to return early to try to stave off a Labour rebellion over anti-terrorism laws.
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In his speech seeking to re-establish Labour as the party of strong British national identity, Brown called for party supporters to “embrace” the Union flag in the way Americans celebrate their national identity.
Brown said Britain did not have the patriotic symbols of the US, such as the Fourth of July, the Declaration of Rights or the Stars and Stripes seen flying in gardens.
“Perhaps Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday are the nearest we have come to a British Day — unifying, commemorative, dignified and an expression of British ideas of standing firm for the world in the name of liberty,” Brown said.
Brown’s plans to set aside a special day to celebrate Britishness were met with approval from some groups and individuals, though criticised by Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National party.
Salmond branded the chancellor “Bulldog Brown”, accusing him of planning to turn Remembrance Sunday into a “flag-waving jamboree”.
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He said the chancellor, the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, was wrapping himself in the Union Jack in the hope of making himself more palatable as prime minister to the English electorate.
“The real trouble for Brown is that Britishness went bust long ago in Scotland and for two generations and more it is Scottish identity which has been on the rise,” said Salmond. “I’m afraid Bulldog Brown is waving the wrong flag at Scotland.”
Brown’s comments come months after the Scottish parliament voted against a bill to create a new public holiday on St Andrew’s Day, instead supporting a move to examine ways in which November 30 could be celebrated without the loss of a day’s work. oBrown also suggested that young people who volunteer for community work could have part of their university tuition fees paid by the state.