Expectations are for a Gordon Brown “recovery” speech on Tuesday when he faces the TUC Conference in Liverpool.

For all the (slightly) better economic/financial data out there, there is still an obvious dichotomy that Britain faces. Do you define the downturn by GDP figures (the formal definition of recession beging two quarters of contraction) or on unemployment figures?

With the dole queue set to grow for years to come, it’s a vital question.

Brendan Barber, head of the TUC, made the point this morning on the BBC’s Politics Show:

I don’t think that’s a real recovery until we begin to see unemployment coming down, and I fear that we, we’re a long way off that.

Alan Johnson was on similar ground, albeit in a slightly garbled way:

I don’t think we’re through the worst of the recession, I, I mean it’s a matter, I think Alistair Darling has led us through this, with Gordon Brown, in, in, absolutely calling every single turn of this the right way. When, when we look at this now, there.. I don’t think we can say that we won’t get any more bad labour market figures, I don’t think we can say that we’re in a situation now where manufacturing is going to recover completely, what we can say, I think, is we’ve seen the early signs, in the construction industry, in consumer confidence, in my own constituency here we’ve seen that the, that the increase in unemployment has kind of levelled off. Now I’d like to think that’s the early signs, but I think there’s a long way to go and what I think the British public need to do as we approach the next Election is listen to the various … plans of the parties for how to get through this…

Of course, no minister wants to prematurely call the recovery. Spotting green shoots is a risky business, as Baroness Vadera found out earlier this year.

Precisely how Mr Brown will address this question on Tuesday will be fascinating to watch. I suspect there will be more rather more about how Labour prevented a financial catastrophe than premature optimism about the imminent future.

According to Sky the speech will include this:

Today we are on a road towards recovery - but things are still fragile not automatic and the recovery needs to be nurtured. People’s livelihoods and homes and savings are still hanging in the balance, and so today I say to you: don’t put the recovery at risk.

“Road towards recovery” is a phrase which covers all options pretty well. It could be a swift road - but also a long and winding one with many potential setbacks etc etc

We revealed a year ago that the Reuben brothers - two property tycoons who made their money in Russian aluminium - had given £186,000 to the Tories, mostly through obscure corporate entities.

Now they have given £5,000 to Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, according to the register of MPs’ interests.

They have also paid £6,660.53 to Michael Howard, former party leader, through their company Motcomb Estates for his work as chair of Northern Racing, which the brothers control.

David Cameron’s suggestion that the government could be run more like Tesco has not gone down well in all quarters.

A group called Tescopoly (set up to defy the grocery giant) points out:

“We are very interested in these comments seeing as previously Cameron has spoken of the need to make trade fairer between supermarkets and farmers* and publicly supported calls for a watchdog.

Regarding the supermarkets cutting costs (and continuing to post record profits during a recession), we need to ask the question of who is paying for this? The answer is suppliers and farmers – and in the long-term consumers.”

Tescopoly’s members include Friends of the Earth and the GMB union.

In April 2008 the big supermarket chains were criticised in parts of a Competition Commission report into the industry.

The commission found:

* “Suppliers receive the lowest prices, on average, from Tesco and obtain the highest prices from small wholesalers and buying groups”

* “Grocery retailers’ buyer power is of benefit to consumers since part of the lower supplier prices arising from this buyer power will be passed on to consumers in the form of lower retail prices…However, the transfer of excessive risks or unexpected costs by grocery retailers to their suppliers is likely to lessen suppliers’ incentives to invest in new capacity, products and production processes. We concluded that, if unchecked, these practices would ultimately have a detrimental effect on consumers.”

Tescopoly argues that this is at odds with the Cameron view of supermarkets reducing costs to ‘make their service to their customers better’.

* I’ve checked out what David Cameron had to say on the issue a year ago:

From the FT, May 2008:

The Conservative leader used the address to renew his criticism of the big supermarkets and to hold out the prospect of cuts in taxation and red tape for their smaller competitors.

“If small independent shops have a greater social value than chains or larger shops, then it makes sense for them to benefit . . . from an advantageous tax and regulatory regime which tips the balance back in their favour against the larger retailers,” Mr Cameron said. But he failed to specify any details of such an “advantageous” regime.

In contrast to his praise for independent retailers, the Conservative leader criticised the relationship between the big supermarkets and farmers as “another example of inadequate regulation”. While the supermarkets’ “habit of using their market power to squeeze the margins” of suppliers could produce welcome price cuts, Mr Cameron warned about abuse of that market power.

Lord Myners gives short thrift today to Tory plans to kneecap the Financial Services Authority and transfer many of its powers to the Bank of England.

In an interview with City AM (the freesheet) the City minister says the central bank neither wants nor has the right skills for the job. He portrays the Bank as an ivory tower full of chin-stroking academics.

“They (Tories) have misjudged the competence and culture of the Bank of England. The Bank is a very academic institution. It is not actually about doing things,” he said.

“The Bank is good at looking at the wider picture but it does not want to be supervising and reflecting on individual banks. Do we want the Bank of England distracted by supervising building societies and insurance companies?”

I was going to blog on Monday about the flaws in George Osborne’s plans but Paul Murphy on FT Alphaville beat me to it. And here is another colleague, Paul J Davies, making a similar point.

Ultimately the reason why financial regulation often fails is because the smart guys aren’t working for the FSA or the SEC: they are making millions of pounds/dollars in the banks.

Chief executives of banks didn’t understand some of the financial products cooked up by youths with PhDs in advanced mathematics. How can we expect low-ranking regulators to be on top of these innovations?

This point is made in a shrewd letter to the FT today by Tim Price of PFP Wealth Management:

“As to the likelihood of the Bank attracting a sufficiently experienced and qualified staff, this gets to the absolute heart of the problem. Short of receiving infinite remuneration, no regulator will ever realistically be able to compete with the so-called “talent” on Wall Street and the City, even if that talent amounts to self-enrichment rather than wider wealth creation.”

See the FT’s Arena blog debate: should the FSA be scrapped?

Expect several front page headlines on Tuesday morning about HMRC’s plunging tax receipts in 08/09 - laid bare thanks to an NAO report. Astute readers of this column will already know about the £20bn-plus fall in tax take - you read it here - because it was flagged up on Budget day in the red book small print. You’ll notice that the coming year is set to be even worse, according to the Treasury’s own predictions.

The real nasty today was another £10bn-plus of unpleasant news, including £3bn of uncollected tax and £7bn set aside for legal claims by taxpayers. The bulk of the latter - a staggering £4.8bn - stems from a single landmark case concluded early last year over VAT repayments. HMRC admitted today that they have already paid £1.5bn as a result of this “Fleming” test case. That’s an awful lot of helicopters or MRI machines.

Read here for the full story about Sir Alan Sugar’s visit to Downing Street.

Will he be Gordon Brown’s new political Apprentice? Appointing the hard-baked entrepreneur as a new minister would certainly be a radical move. Next stop: JK Rowling for culture secretary?

If you think this sounds mad, Sam Coates at The Times reminds us that Brown once invited Fiona Phillips, a GMTV presenter, to become a minister.

Our financial guru Andrew Hill recently envisaged Sugar giving the prime minister a roasting over his handling of the economy.

You may not have noticed, but bank shares have more than doubled from their recent lows as sentiment warms - temporarily or otherwise - to the sector in the wake of government rescue plans on both sides of the Atlantic.

This has repercussions, not least for Lloyds; which is already 43 per cent owned by taxpayers. To participate in the British government’s insurance scheme that figure could rise to 63 per cent (or higher in economic terms).

Or maybe not. Robert Peston makes the point today that Lloyds Banking Group shareholders could still retain more than 50 per cent of the troubled bank.

Unless there’s a sudden and unexpected reversal in Lloyds’ share price, the new shares it is selling may not after all end up being dumped on taxpayers: they may be bought by mainstream, private-sector investors and the state could yet remain with a stake in Lloyds of less than 50%.

Archie Kane, a board member* of LBG, made the same point at the Scotland select committee last week.

“If the preferences shares are converted it could end up with 63 per cent. Even that’s not a certainty…depending on the price of the shares in the market, existing shareholders have the right to buy the shares. It is unclear what the government ownership will be,” he said.

“At this point in time the strike price of these shares is lower than the actual price…that would be reasonable to assume that some of the shareholders will require those shares. It is (still) unclear as to what the final position will be.”

* Group executive director for Scotland

One advantage of a blog is you can flag up curiosities before they become mainstream news. Take the threat of industrial action over foreign workers, which I mentioned here three weeks ago.

I mention this before drawing your attention to a small and obscure clause in the Hooper report on the modernisation of the Royal Mail.

Lord Mandelson, who wants to bring in a private investor into the public group, is at odds with unions who want to see some form of state aid instead. But Hooper makes clear (I think it’s on page 64) that state aid would have to get past Brussels. To do this, he explains, the company would have to carry out options which could include a] radical restructuring and b] closing the final salary pension scheme to existing members.

It seems obvious that b] would be politically explosive. Even in the private sector this has hardly ever been tried before. (Rentokil did it a couple of years ago and kicked up a furore.)

It wouldn’t surprise me if we see Mandelson using this threat to cow the unions into submission later in the year. I can already see the headline now: “Two hundred thousand Royal Mail workers to lose their pensions if they resist part-privatisation, says business secretary“. Remember: you read it here first.