Brown: We're not done yet.

Byline: Jonathan Walker 

NOBODY likes losing. And it's hard to motivate your team when they've got no chance of winning.

So one of Gordon Brown's first tasks was to convince his own Labour activists that the general election could still go their way. And when he delivered his speech to the party conference, he insisted: "We are not done yet."

There was nothing "inevitable" about a Conservative victory, he said.

"Now is not the time to give in, but to reach inside ourselves for the strength of our convictions. Because we are the Labour Party and our guiding duty is to stand, to fight, to win and to serve."

It was rousing stuff, although it didn't receive the rousing applause he may have been hoping for. That came earlier, when the PM listed Labour's achievements over the past century.

Perhaps the party prefers to think about what it's done in the past than to worry about the future. Yet Mr Brown probably succeeded in convincing those present to carry on campaigning. What matters more is whether he convinced voters Labour is still worth backing.

There were some new ideas, including turning post offices into fully-fledged banks, in order to keep them open and stopping single teenage mums from getting council flats, instead placing them in supervised homes.

But how will these be paid for? It remains to be seen whether the money is out there. Plans for minor changes to the voting system don't sound exciting but Mr Brown may have an ulterior motive - reaching out to the Lib Dems, whose help he could need to form a coalition government after the election.

There was a brutal attack on the Tories too, with Mr Brown claiming "they showed they had no hearts".

They say a wounded animal is the most dangerous and Mr Brown pulled

no punches in his attacks on David Cameron. We can expect a vicious election campaign.