Gordon Brown has left London for the Olympics declaring Labour will "go on and win" the next Japan's PM hopes for fresh start with new cabinet ...
Hu Jintao pledges press freedom for Olympics ... general election.
The prime minister, flying to Beijing, dismissed Tory claims his party now had no chance of victory amid poor opinion polls and a slowing economy.
Mr Brown said ministers were working on measures to help families struggling with rising bills and mortgages.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the Tories were best placed to tackle poverty and create a fair society.
Speaking to journalists for the first time after his summer break, Mr Brown, said: "Look, what the people of Britain are concerned about is what is happening to their gas and electricity bills, what is happening to the oil price and the petrol price at the pumps.
"These are the issues that they want us to deal with. You will see us dealing with some of these issues as we come back in September."
When asked about Labour's election prospects, he said: "We are going to go on and win."
'No rift'
Mr Brown also dismissed speculation about a possible leadership challenge by David Miliband after the foreign secretary wrote an article in the Guardian last month setting out his vision for Labour's future with no mention of the prime minister.
Mr Brown said they had been "working pretty closely together on Georgia and issues related to Afghanistan".
He went on: "The article he wrote in The Guardian was an article that any member of the Cabinet could have written or I could have written. These are debates that all members of the Cabinet have got to be involved in."
Mr Brown also ruled out an early Cabinet reshuffle in September, saying that he was "happy with the team".
He went on to dismiss claims he had not responded strongly enough to the crisis in Georgia, confirming he had been involved since the first day.
He hinted that Russia could be left out in the cold on the diplomatic front and said where the G7 group of most industrialised nations had a common interest "the G7 will talk as one, without them".
Following the deaths of 10 French troops and one British soldier in Afghanistan on Tuesday, the prime minister revealed military forces had been expecting a summer offensive by the Taleban after a relatively quiet spring.
"We've got to be prepared for anything that may happen," he said.
He admitted British forces were fighting a very difficult campaign but insisted that coalition forces could cope with a change in tactics, such as more head-on confrontations and guerrilla warfare, suicide bombs and roadside explosions.
He played down fears that fighting the Taleban was becoming unmanageable, adding: "We are doing everything in our power to protect our forces."
Human rights
Mr Brown, who is travelling to Beijing with his wife, Sarah, and two young sons, John, four, and Fraser, two, also said he would be raising the issue of human rights in talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
"Human rights matters to us every year, not just in Olympic year," he said. "We want them to extend the greater freedoms that they have given to journalists and the press at the time of the Olympics beyond the Olympics and further on."
Mr Brown's comments come as the Conservatives seek to pre-empt his party's planned Autumn re-launch by moving on to the traditional Labour territory of poverty reduction.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said his party could do better in tackling poverty and creating a fair society.
He told the BBC "simply chucking money at people" was not enough without tackling worklessness and improving educational chances.
(BBC)
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