Gordon Brown today urged countries to co-operate to help end the global economic crisis, and warned against protectionism and fear.

The British Prime Minister today told delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “This is a global banking crisis and you’ve got to deal with it for what it is, a global banking crisis.”

Mr Brown said the downturn “is not like the 1930s. The world can come together”, adding that the only way forward was through co-operation to rebuild belief following the “crisis of confidence, a crisis of trust in the banking system”.

The Prime Minister brushed aside suggestions that Britain should be rebuilding confidence in the pound, which has slumped in value against the dollar in recent weeks.

Two weeks ago, Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum fund with George Soros, the billionaire investor, said: “I would urge you to sell any sterling you might have. It’s finished. I hate to say it, but I would not put any money in the UK”.

However, Mr Brown said today that past attempts to target sterling amid a financial crisis had ended in failure, and the Government would rely on its measures to kick-start lending and the economy to fight the recession.

He said: “Countries at the moment, the United States, the United Kingdom, the euro area, we do not target our exchange rates.

“The history of targeting of exchange rates has been a recipe for failure over the past 20 years,” he said, citing Britain’s exit from the European exchange rate mechanism in 1992 as an example.

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