G20 SUMMIT:Detractors say summit a last chance for Gordon Brown to engage voters, writes FRANK MILLAR, London Editor

GORDON BROWN has urged people not to be cynical about the prospects for tomorrow’s G20 summit at the ExCeL centre in London’s Docklands.

It must be acknowledged that the British prime minister knows that of which he speaks, for much cynicism abounds about his lofty ambition, actual record of achievement, and base motivation.

As Brown and his loyalists would have it, this summit and his role in it is a no-brainer – “it’s the global economy, stupid”.

By luck (admittedly courtesy of the financial misfortunes of countless millions), events have handed the prime minister a leadership role on the international stage at precisely the moment when the world has need of his skills and far-reaching vision.

Brown the big-thinker – who as chancellor had an impressive record on aid and international development, and who genuinely cares about the world’s poorest – also sees in the election of President Barack Obama a moment of renewed opportunity for what he would characterise as enduring Labour “values”.

For Brown’s detractors and opponents, on the other hand, the G20 represents one of the prime minister’s last opportunities to re-engage the British electorate before inevitable defeats in the local and European contests plunge Labour into what could prove a disastrous general election year.

After a difficult week – during which Bank of England governor Mervyn King executed what Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable only half-jokingly described as “a very British coup”, while Mr Brown toured three continents – expectations are now being reined back.

With Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi already offering to host another summit in July, chancellor Alistair Darling cautions that the London gathering is but part of an ongoing process.

Thwarted by King’s warning that the UK simply cannot afford another big tax-cut-and-spend stimulus, Brown himself now stresses this G20 is about much more than that “narrow” issue. Foreign secretary David Miliband likewise tells us the summit “was never about writing national budgets” and that we should not expect to see rabbits pulled from hats.

Yet, if the realistic lowering of expectations leads to disappointment and generates still more cynicism, Brown will have only himself to blame – because we were really rather encouraged to expect some magic. Before travelling to Washington at the beginning of March, Brown said he and President Obama would be discussing nothing less than “a global new deal, whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York”.

And again, at the beginning of last week in Strasbourg, the prime minister spoke about building “a truly global society” based on “fairness for all”, a “new principled economy” for a “good society” with “values that we bring to the market” – not to mention a proposed £1.4 trillion (€1.5 trillion) spending package which most people seemed to think would be additional to the fiscal stimulus programmes already launched by governments around the world.

Having thought to cast David Cameron’s Conservatives as a “do nothing” party, isolated in the world, Mr Brown has seemingly been forced to retreat in face of European fiscal conservatism as represented by Germany’s Angela Merkel.

President Obama’s focus on the need for a new era of financial regulation as well as fiscal stimulus has eased transatlantic tensions, yet headlines thus proclaiming the certainty of an agreed communiqué also testify to the reality spelt out by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd that any new international spending package will have to await another G20.

It is hardly surprising then that a script anticipating disappointment, if not failure, has already been written.

Yet an early “victory” for Brown was recorded in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, after 10 tax havens signed up to a deal to share information about those suspected of avoiding tax.

At the same time the respected columnist Will Hutton defied the prevailing consensus, telling Observer readers there would be agreement on the creation of a new regulatory architecture for global finance.

His understanding was that, “extraordinarily, the G20 will decide to regulate hedge funds, register credit-rating agencies and their business practices, insist that derivative trading is undertaken in regulated exchanges, set a framework for bank pay and bonuses, require transparency and disclosure of information from tax havens and organise international ‘colleges of regulators’ ”.

That would be something for Brown to crow about, alongside a G20 commitment to continue the process of stabilising financial markets, of restoring confidence and of putting the global economy on track for a return to what Merkel insists this time must be sustainable recovery.

Without that big spending rabbit, however, Mr Brown’s fear must be that the process will survive him.

Irish banks will be among the financial institutions targeted by protesters in a global day of action today, which has been dubbed “Financial Fools’ Day”.

A website promoting “Financial Fools’ Day” in Ireland encourages people to start congregating at the Bank of Ireland and AIB on College Green at 1pm today.

It says the protest is organised by Bloom, “a movement of people in Ireland taking action together for global justice”.

The website encourages people to ask the banks for their money back.

“Let’s give them a queue to remember. Shut them down for the day,” it states. “Reclaim College Green. Dress up as financial fools. Show them how foolish they are.”

The protest is also advertised on the www.indymedia.ie website.