Brown emerges as unlikely saviour of United Kingdom

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) 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 general election.

Tributes flooded in yesterday for the former Labour leader 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.

"Gordon Brown came into his own," said Sean Lang, a senior lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University.

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.