Gordon Brown regularly delivers thundering speeches on how the economy needs to become more competitive to meet the challenges of globalisation. Yesterday, however, the chancellor was mainly in listening mode when he hosted a two-hour seminar at 11 Downing Street attended by leading figures from international business.

As they sat down to breakfast, Mr Brown had one broad question for this eight-person group, which he calls his International Business Advisory Council: what does the UK need to do to meet the globalisation challenge? What is it doing right and what is it doing wrong?