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.
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 major players in the next parliament,” he said. “It was a tentative way of exploring what the common ground is.”
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.
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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.
Meanwhile, the four Lib Dem leadership candidates began the campaign yesterday with speeches to about 500 party activists at a meeting in London.
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In his speech seeking to re-establish Labour as the party of strong British national identity, Brown called for more prominence to be given to British history in the classroom and to highlight the country’s role in winning the second world war.
He rejected recent claims from some education experts that history teaching was fixated on the Third Reich.
Last month, the government’s exams regulator issued new guidance on teaching post-war German history. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority suggested there should be more teaching about the country’s economic success and its re-unification after the cold war.
The authority’s intervention followed complaints by Thomas Matussek, Germany’s departing ambassador to London, that the British were still obsessed with Nazism and ignorant about modern Germany.
Brown said, however: “Just as it was in the name of liberty that in the 1800s Britain led the world in abolishing the slave trade — something we celebrate in 2007 — so too in the 1940s in the name of liberty Britain stood firm against fascism, which is why I would oppose those who say we should do less to teach that period of our history in our schools.”
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He added: “I propose that British history should be given much more prominence in the curriculum — not just dates, places and names, nor just a set of unconnected facts but a narrative that encompasses our history.”
He called for party supporters to “embrace” the Union flag in the way Americans celebrate their national identity.
His close ally and the government’s former “patriotism czar”, the Labour MP Michael Wills, develops the chancellor’s arguments in an article for today’s Sunday Times. oBrown also suggested that young people who volunteer for community work could have part of their university tuition fees paid by the state.