The prime minister will borrow from the rhetoric of Franklin Roosevelt, who introduced the government-financed New Deal to tackle the US Depression of the 1930s. He will argue that his 21st century “global new deal” will also require public spending on a huge world-wide scale.

Writing in The Sunday Times today, Brown calls for “universal action to prevent the crisis spreading, to stimulate the global economy and to help reduce the severity and length of the global recession”.