Sketch | Red Box blog | The bribes | The concessions | Analysis | Cameron the winner

Gordon Brown was celebrating his best day for many, many months last night.

His victory over the 42-day detention issue will not erase at one stroke the doubts over his leadership that have grown as one disaster after another hit him following his decision, after a lot of dithering, not to go for an early election last autumn.

The dismal poll ratings will not surge suddenly and the potential plotters will not stop speculating over whether another leader, maybe David Miliband, maybe Alan Johnson, maybe Andy Burnham, would help Labour’s desperate plight.

And he will not be able to escape the reality that he had to rely on the votes of nine Democratic Unionist MPs, with whom he and his party have little in common, and also to resort to old-fashioned pork-barrel politics to win.

But those urging Mr Brown to be bold as he tries to restore his battered authority were not disappointed. It was a massive gamble that paid off in the end – but he could not have done it without the DUP.

Senior ministers admitted last night that much of the victory was down to Mr Brown himself. A few months ago, as accurate leaks have shown, the whips were telling the Prime Minister that he had a mountain to climb to win the vote. The numbers were not there. Forty-seven current Labour MPs voted against Tony Blair’s 90-day detention plan and it looked as if even more would oppose the 42-day idea. Whichever way they cut it, the whips could not make the sums add up for Mr Brown.

That was before things were to get much worse, with truly awful local election results, the loss of the London mayoralty, and a drubbing in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election. At that point many ministers were in favour of running away from the 42-day vote. Mr Brown was urged, even by some of his friends, to pull it.

But the Prime Minister, fed up with the dithering caricature, decided that it was better to put it to the Commons and lose than drop it and be seen as a coward. And it is a policy he believes in, having promised to return to the detention issue during his leadership campaign just over a year ago.

Mr Brown did not make it an issue of confidence. To have done so would have been potentially suicidal, given the state of play when he went for broke.

But in urging Labour MPs to come on side, the whips did use the argument that to defeat the Government would have been another severe body blow to Mr Brown. For that reason Mr Brown has not improved his standing with MPs who felt dragooned into backing him even though their conscience told them to vote in a different way. It is a card he cannot use too often.

The decision having been taken, Mr Brown took it upon himself to play a huge part in delivering the outcome for himself.

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating