Joy and delight for British PM Gordon Brown as a meeting of European Union leaders today decided to adopt, more or less, the bailout plans for British banks he announced last week. The likes of France, Germany, Italy et al have decided to guarantee interbank lending through 2009 and take preference shares in banks who run out of capital to stop them going bust. We wait to see if this will stop the rot in stock markets worldwide but it probably will, especially as the US is going to do the same thing. Fair do's, the Brown plan is a good one, boosting bank capital with a potential return for the taxpayer, pumping more liquidity into the system and giving those wretched bankers no excuse for not lending to each other. Less than a month ago Brown was toast, with the only question being who would take over from him as Labour leader and prime minister. Tory David Cameron was odds on to become the next PM. Now Brown is in the ascendant and, despite a pretty good performance from Cameron (his shadow chancellor George Osborne has been markedly less good) the Tories are no longer a shoo-in in 2010. They'll probably still win but Brown can still present himself as the man who's saved the world and go on to become head honcho at the World Bank or something. So everyone's happy - apart from those of us who've lost our savings, pensions, houses, jobs etc.