What is it about Gordon Brown at the moment? “I was standing behind him the other day and even his hair looked confident,” observes Stephen Pound, a Labour MP. In recent weeks the British prime minister has pulled off a remarkable feat of political alchemy: the weaker the economy gets, the stronger he becomes.

The “Brown bounce” has become so pronounced that Labour MPs furtively discuss the idea of exploiting the prime minister’s new-found popularity with a dash to the polls in spring 2009 – a year earlier than necessary. Such optimism is extraordinary. Britain is entering a bleak recession; government borrowing is spiralling above £100bn ($149bn, €119bn) a year; unemployment is forecast to reach 3m; businesses lack credit. It is a picture of unremitting gloom, but one man is smiling. Mr Brown’s aides deny he is enjoying the economic crisis. They would. But his decade at the Treasury prepared him for this moment. Anyone spending time with him sees someone galvanised by the challenge of tackling what he calls the “first financial crisis of the global age”.