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Yesterday at the Labour Party conference in the UK there was a make or break speech by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He wasn’t broken, but he wasn’t necessarily made.

His wife, Sarah, preceded the P.M. at the rostrum and she drew a standing ovation for her guts before she said a word, she lends him the humanity and warmth he finds hard to deliver. She says she asked to speak so that she could say how proud she is that her husband is motivated each and every day to work on behalf of all the people of the country, she showed a brief film that showed some of the Party’s claimed success over the last years of the Labour government.

By the time his wife had shown the pep rally type film with pop music pumping the cheers were ringing out. Suddenly the mood was warm and it was like something pent up had burst in favour of the Prime Minister, and he clearly enjoyed the major standing ovation, which was elongated and genuine before he spoke.

The hall was absolutely packed and buzzing with anticipation. The crowd demanded to know what the tone and vision would be for the next year or two.

The gossip before the speech was pretty downbeat apart from the professional cheerleaders. The more thoughtful Labour Party supporters were keen to rally behind their leader as he leads them toward the next general elections.

I will tell you “Who I am, what I believe, and what I can lead this country to achieve, I know the people have concerns about the future of this country”, Brown stated with more passion and flair than he usually displays, “A fair Britain for the new age!” he promised his audience, when the present global financial meltdown is sorted out.

As Brown said, “When I was first standing for election in Fife 25 years ago it was to serve the country I love.” And the message was clear, he still does feel the same drive and energy, he continued,” If people accuse me of being too serious well let me say there is a great deal to be serious about.”

Then he trotted out some very obvious but long cherished New Labour Party principles, “Every child should have a good school” and “We are, we remain and we will be in the future, pro business and pro enterprise. At all times we will put people first.”

He then took a clear side swipe at his Conservative rival leader, David Cameron, “My children aren’t props, they’re people.” He made this statement in light of the fact that Cameron has shown his family eating breakfast on his web site and apparently Brown has refused to use his family this way. In this context it is very strange that Brown saw no contradiction in his allowing Sarah, his wife, to introduce his speech.

Brown then made a more interesting statement with which I agree entirely, “It’s now the global age, we haven’t seen anything like this since the industrial age began. What happened in the last week will be studied by generations to come.”

Then came his promise for what he called the New Settlement, and which many years ago, a great American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the Depression, called The New Deal. He wants to rebuild the world financial system around four clear principles. These are 1. Transparency on all transactions 2. Sound banking 3. Responsibility for your actions, so that if a financial institution cannot use as an excuse that they didn’t know the risk they were running and walk away from it. 4. Integrity, bonuses must not be for short-term gain but for long-term success, hard work and effort. These must be Global standards and this demands global supervision.

He added that we must end the dictatorship of oil and move to an 80% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions by 2050 working towards the lessening of climate change.

At approximately the same time the leaders of the American financial system were facing their political masters in Congressional committee. Their task was quite simply to sell their package of measures to some deeply cynical politicians on both sides of the spectrum.

Right wing Republicans feel, with some truth, that the proposed financial rescue package is almost socialist in nature, leaving, as it does, huge swathes of the American economy publicly owned and controlled. They labeled this Un-American, and it is. That doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do. A National Health Service and Gun Control would also be considered Un-American in this definition, but would be greatly welcomed by many equally patriotic Americans.

The more left leaning Democrats on the committee don’t think the measures go far enough and would like to see punishments and penalties and yet more regulations imposed on the financial birds of prey they consider guilty of dragging us all into this financial quagmire. Again they have a point to consider, but more regulation will only drive more financial control away from Wall St. and off shore to rivals eager to snap up the business.

We can only hope that everyone realizes, in time, it is probably right to have a package of rescue measures somewhere down the middle. We need to see these measures moving forward before the weekend. The markets will react very badly to prolonged political indecision that they simply don’t comprehend.

I am not partisan, but I do know that it is essential that we all support our present leaders through this present situation. The present crisis transcends petty differences and we need the leaders we have to see us through these problems for the sake of our entire planet.

“Fairness is in our DNA,” said Brown, during his excellent and rousing speech that ended this part of a very difficult week. For the first time in a long while the Prime Minister took the battle to the Conservatives. This was a real Labour speech from a real Labour leader.

Brown will continue the UK’s huge public spending programme because he believe in it and he in a future for a British century and he is determined it will be. He claimed his Party’s government has been responsible for 1 million new businesses, 3 million new jobs and 1 million people benefiting from a minimum wage, and all of this he humanized very effectively.

In the bubble of love that is a Party Conference this speech was considered a huge success from a man who came out of his corner ready to fight. “We don’t give in and we never will!” was Brown’s keynote message, and we all need some of this fighting spirit to be employed on our behalf by all our leaders in the biggest economic battle we have ever faced.