Gordon Brown emerges as the 'saviour'
The man credited with swinging Scotland's independence referendum and saving Prime Minister David Cameron's job is ironically his predecessor, Gordon Brown, who was defeated by Cameron in the 2010 election.
Tributes flooded in for the former Labour leader yesterday from the same conservative commentators who once mocked his clumsy style and simmering rivalry with Tony Blair.
Twitter cartoons have even appeared likening him to the superhero Flash Gordon with the slogan: "Gordon's alive!"
Brown "will be celebrated as the union's saviour," read a blog by The Economist, while the Financial Times said: "Scotland these past few weeks has been watching a politician reborn."
The Daily Mail, no friend of Brown when he was in office, hailed him as a "street fighter" and said his campaigning was "stupendous", adding: "Cometh the moment... cometh the man."
The jowly Scot's barnstorming speech on the final day of campaigning on Wednesday was widely shared on social media and was quickly praised as his most impassioned ever.
Brown made a particularly poignant appeal to wartime patriotism in that speech and portrayed the "No" vote as positive -- something the unionist campaign had failed to do.
"We fought two world wars together. There's not a cemetery in Europe that doesn't have a Scot, a Welshman, an Irish and an Englishman side by side," he said.
"Voting 'No' will deliver faster, safer, better and friendlier change," he said, appearing alongside his former finance minister Alistair Darling, whose handling of the "Better Together" campaign was criticised as too negative.
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