MANCHESTER, England (Reuters):

Britain's incoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, vowed yesterday to renew the government and learn lessons from the war in Iraq as he took the helm of the ruling Labour Party from Tony Blair.

Brown, 56, said health, education and ending child poverty would be his priorities when he succeeds Blair as Prime Minister on Wednesday after a long, agonising wait for the top job.

"This week I will form a new government with new priorities to meet the new challenges of 2007 and beyond," Brown told a Labour meeting in Manchester, northern England, to applause.

Focusing his sights on a fourth straight term for Labour, Brown appointed a campaign coordinator to be ready, he said, for an election "whenever the Prime Minister decides to call it".

The next election is due by 2010 but Brown can call it whenever he chooses.

Brown promised to listen to the public and said there would be no backtracking on Blair's public service reforms that have angered parts of Labour.

"If people think we will achieve our goals in the future by retreating to failed approaches of the past, then they have not learned the lessons I have learned from the last 10 years," he said.