Gordon Brown has warned the country that 2009 "won't be easy" as it faces up to the economic crisis.

In a New Year message the Prime Minister insisted that Britain would pull through - but admitted the challenge was "enormous".

"This coming year won't be easy, but I am determined that this Government will be the rock of stability and fairness on which the British people can depend," he wrote.

"The scale of the challenges we face is matched by the strength of my optimism that the British people can and will rise to meet them."

Amid widespread pessimism about 2009, the premier sought to strike an optimistic note at the start of what will be a make-or-break year for the Labour government.

The prospects for a fourth consecutive term in office are likely to turn on the eventual length and extent of Britain's first recession since the early 1990s.

But Mr Brown insisted the British people, and the Government, had demonstrated their ability to get through similar challenges in the past.

He said the task for 2009 was to "build tomorrow", with jobs for the digital age and the green agenda, new transport and communications infrastructure and enhanced skills.

Working together with Britain's world partners, he said, such actions would ensure the UK would "hit the ground running" after the downturn.

The Prime Minister also set out his ambition to see a new economic philosophy replace the "unbridled free market dogma" which has been discredited by the financial crisis.

"I want 2009 to be the year when the dawn of a new progressive era breaks across the world," he said.

In a swipe at the Tories, the Prime Minister insisted failure to act would lead to a worse downturn and a weaker economy in the future.

But Shadow chancellor George Osborne accused the Prime Minister of "arrogance" and said that what the British people wanted to see in 2009 was a change of government.

Mr Osborne said: "Gordon Brown is living in a fantasy land of his own imagination - not the Britain of 2009.

"He talks of tomorrow, but ignores the role he played in creating the mess of today.

"He offers no apology for leading Britain from boom into bust, no explanation of why our country is now the worst affected in Europe, no excuse for why six months of policy announcements have achieved nothing except to add to our national debt.

"He has the arrogance to use Churchillian language when he will go down in history as the politician who spent ten years in high office failing to prepare Britain for the gathering storm.

"The only thing he hardly dares talk about is 'change', because he knows one of things the British people want to see in 2009 is a change of government."

© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.