REBEL Mersey MP Frank Field has cut Gordon Brown down to size, telling him: “You’re no Winston Churchill!”

The Birkenhead MP and fierce Brown critic ridiculed the Prime Minister’s attempt to don the mantle of Britain’s wartime hero to lead the world through the financial crisis.

In a key speech this week, Mr Brown called for world leaders to gather for a new Bretton Woods, the legendary conference held in 1944 to draw up a post-war financial order.

He told his audience: “At a difficult time during the Second World War, far-sighted leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill were already thinking about the framework that would be needed for the future.

“While in the heat of battle, they were taking steps to forge the reconstruction and peace that was to come. It is with the same courage and foresight of these founders that we must now reform and renew the international financial system.”

Mr Field, writing on his blog, said commentators were right to note “how well the Prime Minister looks, walks, and talks during the present crisis”.

But he added: “I wonder whether Mr Brown hasn’t lowered his guard a little too much?

“He compares his efforts in designing a financial rescue package to the kind of fight that Churchill undertook when galvanising the country to defend our very existence.

“There is one difference. When Churchill roared, and led the country into battle, the country knew that he had played no part whatsoever in the appeasement policies that had laid the country open to a deadly threat.”

Mr Brown and Mr Field have fought a decade-long battle over policy, dating back to the Birkenhead MP’s sacking as welfare reform minister at the then-Chancellor’s urging.