Brown admits he got it wrong - too little too late?

So Gordon Brown has finally, finally admitted what we all knew which was that he made mistakes regarding the regulation of banks which helped contribute to the credit-crunch and ultimately recession. In an ITV interview which will be broadcast tonight he has admitted that he succumbed to lobbying and that:

"In the 1990s, the banks they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' ... And all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.'

"The truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."

"You don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us.' You've got to talk about the whole public interest."

So, far from it all being "from America" as has been his mantra for years he is now admitting that he bears some responsibility and highlighting where he went wrong. I have been saying for ages that he should have done this. The only way that someone who has been near or at the top of government for 13 years can have credibility on something as major as this is to admit your culpability.

However we are 22 days away from the general election. Brown has had years to admit this and he has left it to the eleventh hour. It suggests to me that he is panicking for him to do something so clearly against his natural instincts probably pushed into by his advisers who are now trying anything they can to boost his chances.

Perhaps the polls in the next few days will indicate whether this has helped him. I think it will be seen as too little, too late. A deathbed confession by someone who deep down still doesn't really think they have done anything wrong.