Until the crisis struck, the conventional wisdom was that Mr Brown was a tragic-comic figure: a man who had desperately wanted to be prime minister, but had proved hopelessly unfitted to the task.

But the Brown bail-out plan has been seized upon, not just in Britain - but around the world. Last Friday Paul Krugman, the new Nobel laureate for economics, praised the British government for "showing the kind of clear thinking that has been all too scarce in America". He wrote: "The United States and Europe should just say: 'Yes, prime minister.' The British plan isn't perfect, but . . . it offers by far the best available template for a broader rescue effort."

And so it came to pass. The emergency European summit in Paris over the weekend saw the 15 members of the European single currency area adopt bank rescue plans that look strikingly like the British initiative. British officials, who have often been told that in a big economic crisis they would be tugged along hopelessly in the wake of the eurozone, are enjoying their moment of vindication.