Defiant Brown pledges to clean up financial system

British prime minister Gordon Brown today kicked off the Labour conference in Manchester with a promise to do “whatever it takes” to clean up the financial system and protect British jobs and savings.

Buoyed by a £1m (€1.26m) donation to Labour by Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Brown acknowledged he was going through “testing times” but insisted he was determined to continue to serve all the people of the country.