What's that loud noise coming from London SW1? It's Gordon Brown, sighing with relief.
Not just at the fizzling of the attempted putsch against him, but at the story that has dominated politics for the last 24 hours: the claim and counter-claim over Labour and Tory plans for public spending.
It's a relief for Brown because it means that, for the first time in a month, the morning papers have not led with MPs' expenses or challenges to the Labour leadership. The damage to him from the latter is obvious. As for the former, the daily pain inflicted by the Telegraph should have hurt his rivals as much as him: after all, David Cameron "“ not Gordon Brown "“ is the millionaire who paid off one mortgage while taking £102,000 from the taxpayer to pay off another. And it is Cameron's fellow millionaire, George Osborne, who is today revealed as having "flipped" residences so that you and I could help pay off the £450,000 mortgage on his rather lovely Cheshire farmhouse.
Still, the polls show it is Labour, and Brown specifically, that has been most damaged by the expenses scandal. That's partly because his own reaction to it was so leaden-footed and partly because people tend to blame the majority, governing party for the way parliament operates.
That story will not go away, just as the questions over Brown's job security linger. But this morning's 8.10 lead on the Today programme, like last night's Newsnight and yesterday's prime minister's questions, will have felt like a blessed respite. All three centred on the spending plans debate.
This is Brown's comfort zone, the place where Labour fought and won the last three elections. To hear Cameron utter the words "Labour investment v Tory cuts" at PMQs would have sounded like sweet music to the battered prime minister. Characteristically, he was too slow to pounce on it, to seize on Cameron's use of that key Brownian phrase as if it were an admission of guilt. But still. At long last Brown is on the terrain he likes best.
Of course, it may not last. Today has already brought more questions about Shahid Malik's expenses and further noises off from Caroline Flint. More importantly, it's quite possible that the investment v cuts fault line won't work anymore. People might simply refuse to believe Brown's claims that Labour will keep spending, given the state of public debt and the admissions from his own chancellor. In the Times, Anatole Kaletsky argues that even if people believed Brown, they would not agree with him: "I suspect that almost everybody believes that government spending should be cut back sharply once the recession is over."
Brown will be happy to take the risk that Kaletsky is wrong "“ if only because it means we're not talking about Hazel Blears' capital gains tax or his own unpopularity.
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