Gordon Brown arrived in Number 10 a year ago offering an end to the spin of the Blair era, yet in the past 12 months he has increasingly turned to executives from the worlds of public relations and marketing to help dig him out of his difficulties.

The most controversial is Stephen Carter, a 44-year-old former advertising and PR man, brought in as Mr Brown's chief of strategy and principal adviser, to the dismay of the loyal footsoldiers who followed Mr Brown into Downing Street.

Mr Carter was hired from Brunswick, the financial PR group, and had previously been the first chief executive of Ofcom, the media regulator. He is credited with smoothing Mr Brown's political operations.

He brought in a number of new Brown advisers including Nick Stace, formerly of Which?, and David Muir, from the marketing giant WPP, as well as Nicola Burdett from the BBC.

Mr Carter's perceived strength was that he was an "outsider" with little political baggage, but some Labour MPs complain that the flipside is he is short on political nous.

Jeremy Heywood, Mr Brown's chief of staff, has been heard to despair of Mr Carter's "management speak". Brownites call Mr Carter's team the "PR Week crowd", after the trade publication that has broken a number of stories about personnel changes at Number 10.