GORDON BROWN chose a Wirral school for a dry-run of his farewell speech, ahead of the election of Ed Miliband at the Labour Party conference.

Mr Brown and his wife, accompanied by sons Fraser and John, dropped in to St John Plessington, in Bebington, for a Q&A session with local residents. He also delivered a speech on jobs and the economy.

The former prime minister, whose Parliamentary secretary is Wirral South MP Alison McGovern, used the relaxed session to test out some of the key themes he went on to use in his final address to the party at the conference in Manchester some hours later.

And the brooding Scotsman betrayed none of his “dourness” as he joked about his sons’ understanding of who their father was.

Mr Brown said: “I had a wonderful experience the other day. I picked my son up from school and he told me ‘I want to be a teacher . . . and a builder . . . and a dad. But, he said to me, ‘you’re just a dad’.”

The same story was greeted with warm applause from his party members before the nail-biting final vote on his successor.

Mr Brown’s visit to the school – rated the best in the country in this year’s Times Educational Supplement awards – also saw him hammer home the importance of a strong morality underpinning the way the economy is governed.

Many audience members’ jaws dropped as they heard of the recklessness and self-deception of the big financiers who Mr Brown’s government bailed out in order to stop a world financial meltdown.

Mr Brown said: “There was a fear at that time that by the end of the week no-one could get any cash out of the cash machines, wages could not be paid or businesses could not have overnight finance or cashflow because the banks had self-destructed.”

He added: “We had banks deceiving themselves about what their true position was. There was one bank, even as it was going down, paying out huge dividends and executive bonuses to people who were their friends.

“You can only have a system that works if it is underpinned by morality. You can’t have it unless fairness and responsibility, as well as enterprise, are at the heart of what they do.

“The night before one of the biggest banks collapsed, as it had no capital and could not take care of its risks, I was talking to the head of the bank and he said ‘all we need is overnight finance, just a bit of capital to keep us going’. His bank crashed virtually the next day, so they were deluding themselves.

“Another banker said ‘We are only just beginning to understand the risks we have been taking’.”

Mr Brown left for the party conference to a standing ovation. MP Miss McGovern, who organised and hosted the event, paid tribute to the former Prime Minister, adding: “Doing politics with Gordon Brown watching is like playing football with Robbie Fowler watching, so forgive me if I’m a bit nervous.”