Employers and their workers are today bearing the brunt of the “difficult birth-pangs of a new global order” Gordon Brown says the global economic crisis has brought about.

As the prime minister warned against a retreat from globalisation, more warnings about the state of the country’s economy were sounded.

According to the British Bankers Association (BBA), the number of new mortgages approved by UK banks fell 52 per cent last year.

Days after Britain officially entered a recession for the first time in 18 years, steelmaker Corus was led a raft of job cuts by announcing up to 2,500 redundancies in the UK.

Recruitment firm Randstad said up to half of companies were planning job cuts in the coming year as a Bank of England economist warned unemployment could rise to three million in 2009.

At the Ulster Bank 700 jobs will go in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, while global electronics firm Philips announced 6,000 job cuts, although it is unclear how many jobs will be lost in the UK.

Last week the prime minister and chancellor Alistair Darling unveiled a scheme offering insurance to banks against losing money from the toxic debts that prompted the credit crunch.

And Mr Darling is said to be preparing borrowing more money to prop up essential industries in the spring Budget.

Despite this, and a stateside survey warning the United States was facing its worst business conditions in almost 30 years, Mr Brown reiterated his call for a “new global order” at a speech in central London this morning.

“Our task now is nothing less than making the transition through a new internationalism to the benefits of an expanding global society – not muddling through as pessimists but making the necessary adjustment to a better future and setting the new rules for this new global order,” he told journalists.

“Creating a new culture of financial discipline in Whitehall is not going to be easy,” the prime minister continued.

“It will be like turning around a supertanker.

“But with a determined political will and the right plans, we can do it. We can turn the Whitehall supertanker and put Britain on the right course.”