Michael Settle: "What can we expect from Brown's sermon?"

Twenty years almost to the day after Margaret Thatcher gave her deeply controversial Sermon on the Mound to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Gordon Brown will outline his own vision of Britain in an address in Edinburgh tomorrow.

In what seems to be an appearance timed to highlight the contrast with the Thatcherite view of Britain, the Prime Minister will set out his own philosophy about the relationship between the nation and the individual in a highly personalised address at the Assembly Hall.

In her speech to the General Assembly on May 21, 1988, Mrs Thatcher spoke about wealth creation and individual responsibility but to her critics it simply highlighted the damaging nature of her right-wing politics.

She quoted St Paul, saying: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat," noting: "Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of creation."

The audience listened in silence as she told them: "It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong but love of money."