So Gordon lives to fight another day.
A complete Euro election fiasco for Labour but Mr Brown is still at the helm and adamant he can sail the HMS Not-so-Great-these-days Britain through the rocks of economic disaster and forward to the straights of Recovery.
Maybe he can.
Maybe UKip's vote share is a protest vote. Maybe concerns about the rise of the BNP are unfounded and we should not see their gains as an indicator of rising fascism. Ukip has defused a great deal of the impact they may have hoped to gain.
But there can be no doubt that there is a rise in nationalism and that isn't just a UK experience, it's a global shift. From the optimism of the 1990s, when the Cold War ended, we now see Russia is focusing on Russia. It's clearly interested in national standing before embracing the EU's no-borders philosophy. China is now moving to build internet-blocking software into its PCs to control what its people see of the outside world. India is a rapidly rising economic force.
Robert Kagan's The Return of History and the End of Dreams is very easy-to-read in getting to grips with worldwide geo-political landscape, if anyone's interested.
