After today, Brown is no longer the master of his fate

Brown has revelled in the economic crisis. A Prime Minister who was presumed to be a dead man walking found himself in a position where people had to listen to him. the combination of the severity of the situation and the institutional authority of his office revived him.

Since September, Brown has played his cards masterfully. He has forced the Tories onto the back foot and is now in striking distance of them in the polls. But the PBR forces the government to fully lay out its plan for how it plans to get the country out of this mess. After today we won’t be waiting for hints of what he is going to do, but waiting to see if what he has done has worked. Suddenly the pressure will be back on him.

If the economy does avoid a steep recession, Brown will be able to portray himself as the hero of the hour and he will go into the next election with more than a fighting chance. But if the country does go into in the kind of L-shaped recession that most economists are expecting, Brown will find that his time is up: Britain’s economic Houdini will have been punched in the stomach.