Gordon Brown pulled out a rabbit from his hat at the Labour party conference: his wife, Sarah. Pictures of the couple adorn the front pages, prompting the Mirror's headline: Gordon's wife-line. The ploy, straight out of American politics, accentuated the touchy-feely theme of the prime minister's speech as he sought to make himself less of an automaton and more of a regular guy.
"A stunt of such effrontery that Tony Blair must for once have nodded in approval," Matthew Engel writes in his sketch for the Financial Times.
Other papers pick up on Brown's not at all bad line against David Cameron and his own Labour pretenders: that this is no time for novices. But there is no getting away from Labour's bleak electoral prospects with a tanking economy and most commentators think Brown is still a loser.
"Cynical as hell, but splendid, too. He won't go without a fight. He will die with his boots on. Over to you, Labour mutineers," Matthew d'Ancona, the editor of the Spectator, is quoted in the Guardian as saying.
The Independent's Hamish McRae argues that Brown has made such a mess of Britain's finances by borrowing so much that he should get the boot. More in sorrow than in anger, McRae writes: "So he understands all. He understands he hasn't got it right. And that is hugely frustrating because he would like more time to try and undo the mistakes he knows he has made - in particular the mistakes he set out not to make in 1997. But we won't give him time, nor should we."
Unlike many pundits who thought Brown made a decent speech, Alice Miles is scathing in the Times: "He cannot communicate and he cannot inspire. Look at the polls; Labour is facing obliteration. Mr Brown is its Voldemort, the flight of death."
Even some of Brown's thunder has been stolen with the confirmation this morning that Ruth Kelly, his transport minister, is stepping down in the imminent cabinet reshuffle.
