A chastened Brown came yesterday to the Labour Party conference in Manchester seeking a political makeover. Several weeks have passed since the simmering tensions between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gordon Brown -- his finance minister and expected successor -- erupted into open intra-party strife. The in-fighting had done little to aide Brown's ambitions to head the party and the country after Blair steps down next year. In Manchester, Brown was hoping to exchange the divisive reputation he had recently acquired for a confident and unifying mien more befitting a future leader.

Brown's speech on Monday seems to have done the trick. Eschewing criticism of Blair, Brown spoke warmly about their long relationship. He also eased concerns among Labour delegates that he was hoping to steer the party away from the moderate New Labour philosophy of the Blair government. Rather, he stressed his experience under Blair and the "moral compass" inherited from his father, a church minister.

Now Brown can only wait to see if his speech was sufficiently concilliatory to earn the Prime Minister's explicit endorsement in his farewell speech to the Labour Party conference on Tuesday. In the meantime, German papers weighed in with their own assessments of Brown's performance.

Financial Times Deutschland remarks that Brown passed the loyalty test set out for him: "He gave a speech that could just as well have been the speech that Blair himself is going to give on Tuesday." But Brown still has hurdles to cross; his scope to announce major policy shifts is limited given that he himself has shaped the government's economic and tax policy over the last years. And "when you can't distinguish yourself by content, you have to do it by personality, by presenting yourself as a leader. This is not Brown's thing." The forecast, then, is not so bright for Brown: "In times when traditional voting connections are crumbling, the charisma of (new Tory chief) David Cameron can tip the scales."

Business daily Handelsblatt argues that Brown's speech revealed him as a closet conservative. "His speech left no doubts about his ambition. He is tired of being a number cruncher who deals with budget plans and tax laws. Now he wants to rehabilitate British society from the ground up, not only financially but morally." According to the business daily, Brown's insistent moralizing would be a change in course from the more measured tone of the Blair years. "Brown won't have any trouble securing the job as Blair's successor. Then we'll see whether, after ten years of a Cool Britannia campaign and the spending boom engineered by Brown himself, the British are up for Victorian virtues."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung shares the skepticism regarding Brown's future prospects. Labour delegates received Brown with applause befitting a Prime Minister, but, the paper argues, his speech must have given some party insiders a "stomach ache." "Draconian anti-terror laws, global commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, more awareness of duty and personal initiative, even the rejection of all anti-Americanism – if one had only read the text of Brown's speech, there would have hardly been any difference from Blair." Nonetheless, the most pressing question is whether Brown "is the right man to lead his party to a fourth electoral victory." The paper thinks his chances are slim. "Labour's stomach pains are just getting started."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung suggests that Brown's presence smacked of insecurity and paranoia. "Brown called Blair, whom he hopes to succeed next year, the most successful prime minister of all time – it would have sufficed to hail him as the the most successful post-war Labour chief. But maybe Brown had to use the historic superlative because he wasn't sure if the Blair camp didn't really want to sabotage the show." The paper argues that this insecurity extends also to Brown's political program and his wholehearted endorsement of the Blair government. Blair's domestic reforms have proven popular with voters – but why didn't Brown distance himself from Blair's foreign policy? "Tactic, or conviction?" the paper wonders.