Was This The Rehabilitation Of Gordon Brown?

By Faisal Islam, Political Editor

An important subplot of this week's constitutional convulsions was the role of former prime minister Gordon Brown.

Although it appears he was parachuted in to help the No campaign after the late-August Salmond surge, the rapprochement between Mr Brown and his former colleague and antagonist Alistair Darling occurred months ago. He always was going to play a significant role.

In those months Mr Brown had regularly pleaded with Conservatives to firm up an offer for maximal devolution to bring home the No vote.

The Conservatives resisted.

While the polls showed a 20 point lead under Mr Darling, why would they offer such gifts?

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But when the polls tightened after the second debate, with Labour voters tempted by a promise of a Scotland free of Tory rule forever, Mr Brown took control.

It was essentially an insurance policy. A premium paid in the form of a promise and then a vow, against even a small risk of the unthinkable break up of the union.

And Mr Brown knew that Downing Street would pay it. A set, tight timetable for more devolution of tax and spending powers, achieved by aligning the core of three unionist parties' devolution plans. Draft legislation by Burns Night in January.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair (L) hands Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown an icecream a..

Mr Brown was a formidable chancellor for many years...

Mr Brown has long form for championing extra powers for Scotland stretching back to his student days.

It gave credibility to a vague promise.

And most importantly the SNP found it difficult to attack him too much.

As one senior SNP member puts it: "We can't attack Gordon Brown - all we can say is 'he's a good man, but he's got this one wrong." Mr Brown announced the timetable and the powers, and within hours Downing Street and the other parties signed up to the deal.

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This was no ploy from Mr Brown. He was achieving, through deployment of his Scottish political capital in an electoral crisis, some of the constitutional reforms he had hoped to achieve as prime minister.

When I spoke to him on Wednesday, I asked him why the rest of Britain should accept this.

"The change I propose to the leaders of the parties is not at the expense of the rest of the UK," he said.

"The regions and the nations in the rest of the UK I think will be quite happy with these changes.

"And I think the offer must be open to them, if they wish to pursue the path of further devolution then that is a good thing to do. What we are admitting is that the old UK constitution which was uniform, unitary, centralised, Westminster sovereignty undiluted, that's all going."

He said his children had prompted him to get involved in the No campaign

And what about even the maintenance of the Barnett formula for public spending?

"This is not at the expense of equity for the regions and nations of the UK. Scotland is not asking for anything at the expense of these regions and nations. But the centralising tendencies in London will have to change," he told me.

Above all Mr Brown regained his political class, the return of a heavyweight prize fighter out of semi-retirement.

His speeches displayed the passion of his peak powers as Chancellor in the early 2000s. His final conference speech at Maryhill Community centre could be remembered as one of the greats. The only thing we missed: the opportunity to see him slug it out in debate with Mr Salmond.

His motivation was singular, he told me.

I asked him if he was enjoying his return to the centre of the debate. "I'd left frontline politics, I have entered this campaign for one reason only, because I was thinking about my children's future," he said.

"My children are brought up in Scotland, at school in Scotland. Given this choice could affect their future and their children's future, so someone like me as a father and a parent could not afford to be out of this debate. But I have no desire to be back in frontline politics."

His ideas will now condition a British devolution revolution for at least six months. Much mocked for his accidental claim to have "saved the world" in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Mr Brown can now certainly lay claim to having helped save the Union.