What a result. For Gordon Brown to win Glenrothes with a higher percentage of the vote breaks all rules and expectations. Governments lose byelections, don't they? Despite Scottish peculiarities, make no mistake - this was a byelection fought on Brown's personal standing in his own back yard with a candidate strongly identifying himself with the Brown ticket.
How extraordinary that just two months ago the prime minister was a crumpled heap of despair. Directionless, everything he touched turned to dross. That man would certainly have lost this byelection. That man would now be facing serious insurrection in his party with a mass uprising in the ranks of MPs facing lost seats with the Tories 20 points ahead. It was not a matter of liking or not liking Gordon Brown, but of avoiding a Labour catastrophe.
But now look how he beams and bounces into international meetings - yesterday Brussels, next week Washington - where he is listened to with great respect as one of the very few leaders who understands finance: others rely on notes passed from advisers seated behind them. He has become the world's bank manager, the right man in a great global bank crash. That respect rubs off at home.
But political challenges ahead demand more than the talents of a bank manager. When the immediate crisis is past, a long dark recession, possibly a slump, stretches out bleakly for a year or much more. Daily the news gets worse - potteries crash, car makers go slow, thousands are laid off in businesses large and small. Even the Queen this week said: "It's awful. Why did nobody see it coming?" The IMF crushed Brown's unwise boasts about the strength of Britain's economy with a warning that it will suffer four times more than other advanced economies.
When people fear for their jobs and homes, they turn upon the government of the day - ask the Republicans. To live down the blame and lead through the turmoil will require an extraordinary ability to empathise, reassure, take bold action, spread the pain fairly, and find the words that capture the public mood.
Meanwhile, across the ocean shimmers the bright aura of Barack Obama, the man who can. All of Europe longs to bask in his glory in the usual unseemly scramble to be first through the new president's door. But Europe's current leadership - Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi and our own Brown - may find themselves scorched by the comparison. To the centre-left Obama sets a remarkable challenge, especially to the Labour government. He has changed everything: triangulation is dead; saying what you mean and meaning what you say has won the day for progressive values, with no feinting to the right. Can Gordon Brown grasp how many of the old rules Obama has broken?
Here is an American president - repeat, an American president - elected on a platform well to the left of Labour's. Obama is pledged to take 10 million of the lowest paid out of taxation, paid for by higher taxes on earners of above $250,000. Brown has never permitted even the whisper of a suggestion of taxing the rich more fairly. He never castigated the greedy in the years of plenty when they needed to hear it. But here's the extraordinary thing: Obama won 52% of the vote even among those high earners. He broke the spell that said any centre-left party threatening to tax the rich would be dead in the water. Obama won the day when he said: "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." However often John McCain and Sarah Palin replayed the phrase, calling it socialism, the spirit of fairness resonated with voters.
Obama talked openly about obscene pay at the top: "You can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street." He said: "The last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else." Can you imagine Brown ever saying this? "Our free market was never meant to be a free licence to take whatever you can get, however you can get it." Obama promises a windfall on energy companies too.
Beyond that, he lays into tax avoiders. "There's a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US-based corporations. That's either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world." He promises to close the loopholes and "restore fairness to our tax code". So who rules the Caymans? We do. Who controls more tax havens than any other nation in the world? We do. Let's hope Obama now forces us to shut them all down. Much of the £28bn missing in uncollected UK taxes leaks out here - and 11 years into a Labour government, our tax havens remain untouched.
So will Gordon Brown get the deep message of the Obama win? Stop being afraid of your own shadow. Say what you think. On gross greed and excess, the people are far ahead of the politicians, as they are on the behaviour of banks. Yesterday, prodded by the public outrage (or maybe by the Mail's "Shame of the banks" front page), Alistair Darling summoned the bankers in and made each of them round the table say, one by one, what they would do to cut their lending rates - and they did. Labour is learning to say boo to the goose.
Now it's time to abolish bonuses, ending the phoney "performance related" culture that brought the world economy to its knees. There is no research evidence for its effectiveness: it simply inflates excess. Clean up corporate culture; stop fleecing shareholders with outrageous pay and executive expense account extravagance with money stolen from our pension funds. A time of austerity, where millions suffer greatly and permanently in lost jobs, homes and businesses, demands political leadership that echoes the indignation on the streets. Obama did just that.
America always amazes, and we usually follow on - sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Blair made the terrible mistake of following the lead of the very worst of all US presidents. The question now is whether Brown can breathe in the message from one who may prove to be among the very best.