Brown Gets Room to Breathe, Not to Boast

Barely three weeks ago he was a doomed loser. Now Gordon Brown is acknowledged in unlikely high places as putative saviour of the world's financial system. A banker with such a spectacularly upgraded credit rating would - not so long ago - have embarked on a reckless borrowing splurge.

What will it do for Brown? Nothing enrages his political opponents more than the thought that the government's belated but sweeping financial rescue package may allow Brown to do what Margaret Thatcher managed in the Falklands war of 1982. She absolved her team's mistakes and failures which led to war, by burying them in a larger success - and blaming others. For Argentine generals, read American estate agents and Icelandic bankers. History gets written by the winners.

A few labor MPs are already muttering about exploiting the modest Brown Bounce, tentatively confirmed by post-rescue polling, to stage a "safety first" spring election in 2009. A few Tories think it might be his least worst option. It will not happen.

Friend and foe alike know that the unavoidable recession will be impacting upon everyone's job and shopping habits by Christmas. Brown and Alistair Darling's experience card has edged them above the Cameron-Osborne team in some surveys. But the Tory lead is still in the 44%-32% range, squeezing the Liberal Democrats and giving David Cameron a solid Commons majority. A long slog looms.

"We're going to have to do the best we can, what else can we say?" says one cautious Brown ally. Hardly a note of Falklands triumphalism, it is the sensible response at the start of what - on more optimistic scenarios - will be a grim year of rising unemployment, borrowing and (eventually) taxes, followed by slow recovery. Much depends on events beyond the prime minister's control.

A gloomy scenario for recession would turn the Falklands analogy - a short, sharp, victorious war fought 8,000 miles away - into a cross between Iraq and Northern Ireland's Troubles: apparent success followed by a long period of low-intensity warfare.

What the crisis has done is to give Brown a breathing space, and a chance to remind people what an experienced finance minister he is, admired even in Brussels. As an ex-cabinet colleague generously puts it: "He's got his dignity back, but will it last?"

In other words, even if the Brown Dyno-Rod unblocks financial markets, the flattering summiteering will end, allowing No 10 to resume its hesitant course - unless the crisis has turned chrysalis Brown into a prime ministerial butterfly at last.

In the blame game historical evidence points both ways. In 1982 Thatcher emerged as the Iron Lady, able to offset deep recession with patriotic tunes and a divided opposition. Elevated in 1940, Churchill was blamed in 1945 for pre-war errors (not his own) and thrown out. Chancellor Harold Macmillan was gung ho for invading Suez in 1956 until the Yanks torpedoed sterling. Emerging from the ruins as PM, he went on to win in 1959.

Long-term odds must still be stacked against a Brown win in 2010. But fortune favors the bold and if the past week shows anything it is that luck can change.

Next test: the Glenrothes by election on November 6.