Gordon Brown is enjoying himself

"The world is crashing around his ears and Mr Brown has to stop himself smiling too obviously. His chin is up. His stride has lengthened. His shoulders have straightened. He has even taken to cracking jokes, albeit of the gallows variety. When someone's mobile interrupted a speech, he chucklingly wondered 'if another bank has fallen'. Those who have spent time in conversation with him in recent days find the Prime Minister on remarkably relaxed form. He has become a fount of political aphorisms. 'An hour is a long time in politics,' he has been heard to quip, an updating of Harold Wilson's old saw, referring to both the dizzying speed of global events and the apparent reversal in his own fortunes... He is enjoying this crisis. In fact, he has probably never felt more alive as Prime Minister. That is quite a transformation for a man who, just a few weeks ago, was being taken for dead." — Andrew Rawnsley, The Guardian