A rejuvenated Gordon Brown travels early to a European Union summit today after receiving generous praise for his leadership role in Europe’s response to the financial crisis.

The Prime Minister will arrive in Brussels the day after the EU’s leading official admitted that the multi-billion programme under which banks across Europe are being bailed out by their governments is the “Brown plan”.

The man who successfully fought Tony Blair to keep Britain out of the euro is enjoying as friendly relations with the leading members of the eurozone as his predecessor.

He was even invited into the inner sanctum of the club last weekend to urge them to follow the British solution.

Mr Brown’s high-profile stance during the crisis has won him plaudits in the American and European press and has been a substantial morale boost for the beleaguered Labour Party and the Prime Minister himself, who only a few weeks ago was felt to be at serious risk.

It has even given rise to fanciful suggestions, being pushed by former spin doctors and junior Conservatives hoping to flush a denial out of Mr Brown, that he might even be tempted to call an election next year as “the man who saved the financial system”.

It is not an idea that would win support within the Labour leadership or among threatened Labour MPs. The Conservatives retain a double-digit lead in the polls and, short of a turnaround for Mr Brown similar in scale to last week’s slide in the stock markets, it will not become an issue.

Mr Brown is clearly at last enjoying being prime minister and is unlikely to risk throwing it all away until he has to. Bitten last autumn, when he walked away from the chance of early election, he does not intend to be bitten again.

And many of Mr Brown’s ministerial colleagues, while gratified by his performance in recent days, admit there will be tough times ahead for the Government as the impact of the slowdown and the rescue of the banks comes through to people’s pockets.

Mr Brown himself appeared to be aware of the dangers of claiming too much yesterday. At a briefing with foreign journalists he was asked whether he considered himself to be a superhero and if he was Flash Gordon. He replied: “Just Gordon, just Gordon, I can assure you.”

Asked about his more favourable coverage in the media recently, he said: “I think you should look at what they were saying about me four weeks ago.”

But no one at Westminster is denying that Mr Brown looks to be in a better place than he has been for some time.

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