British magic: it is Gordon Brown, the magician of Anglo-Saxon liberalism, who is giving lessons on state intervention to the continentals.

le Monde

The stock markets are collapsing, British banks are teetering on the brink but the crisis seems to have reinvigorated one man: Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister has not seemed so at ease, so sure of himself and convincing for the past year. In a few days, he has managed to partially nationalise the whole British banking sector without provoking the slightest negative reaction from the City or the Opposition ... Gordon Brown has successfully donned the mantle of a Churchill who comes into his own in times of crisis.

le Figaro

Gordon Brown has rediscovered his smile. The British Prime Minister is showing boundless good humour. The moody Scotsman has apparently found in the financial storm hope of an undreamed-of rebound.

La Tribune, business daily

Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown were the masterminds, the two fathers, of the successful plan. Premier Gordon Brown is the leader in this. It is to his credit, together with his Chancellor, that he came up with the simple but effective plan to get money flowing between banks again and backed this up with government guarantees.

De Volkskrant, the popular Dutch newspaper

Gordon Brown, whose ability to win elections was openly questioned by his own party less than a month ago, is now experiencing a Winston Churchill moment, of being able to take decisions which change the course of world events, and of being a leader capable of reinventing himself in the midst of a crisis. But Churchill also lost elections after winning the war.

Diario de Noticias, Lisbon

The British Prime Minister, in contrast to the bad decisions which he took in the past seems to have found the right mark with his rescue plan. The measure will be followed in the US and shortly by other European governments.

Daniel Pingarron Salazar, of IG Markets, in El Mundo

It remains to be seen if the UK bailout package will rescue the country’s banks. But it has changed the image the world had of the UK’s top officials... In a matter of days, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Treasury Chief Alastair Darling have shed their reputation for bumbling. Just a year ago, their missteps contributed to the UK’s first bank run in more than a century and a month ago Mr Brown had some of the lowest opinion poll ratings of any modern prime minister. Today, their plan is being held up as a model around the globe.

Wall Street Journal

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, given up in Britain as political flotsam just weeks ago, has emerged from the global financial crisis as a leader whose ideas are influencing policy from Europe to Washington.

“He’s the cat who got the cream,” said Anthony Seldon, a British historian and author. “There is hardly a world leader who has a more profound mastery of economics.

“It was a gift from heaven for him to have this crisis in his field of expertise.”

While no one argues that Brown alone is driving global policy, his 10 years as Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer give him more experience with the world’s financial architecture than almost any other world leader.

Washington Post

Has Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, saved the world financial system? OK, the question is premature - we still don’t know the exact shape of the planned financial rescues in Europe or for that matter the United States, let alone whether they’ll really work. What we do know, however, is that Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the Exchequer, have defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up... Policy is, finally, being driven by a clear view of what needs to be done. Which raises the question, why did that clear view have to come from London rather than Washington?

Luckily for the world economy, however, Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense. And they may have shown us the way through this crisis.

Paul Krugman, winner of this year's Nobel prize for economics, writing in the New York Times/International Herald Tribune

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