Just back from travelling with "Britain's next prime minister" on tour - that's how most people see him and that's how he's beginning to behave.
Speaking to me on the way back from a trip to Birmingham tonight, Gordon Brown calls for tougher laws to deport and exclude extreme Muslim clerics; new laws to ban the glorification of terror, and is hinting that if he moves to Number 10 he wants to revisit the laws on detaining suspects for up to 90 days.
What's more, he says he backs education reform now and in the next Parliament. I think I know what he's saying. Watch for yourself!
Or if you prefer to read it, here are some highlights:
On terror
He said he understood the anger and fury felt by people over the extremist demonstrations against cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, accusing the placard-waving fanatics of "abusing their citizenship of Britain". When I asked him about suggestions that he was against tougher anti-terror laws, such as ID cards, the chancellor said: "They have certainly got me wrong because I want the toughest of security in defence of people's liberties, in defence of our country's freedoms, in defence of the safety of individuals in this country."
"People" he added "are worried about the social cohesion of our country...We need to be more British, we need to integrate our society more closely and defend what are the values that we hold in common."
On reform
"My message is reform is going to continue. This is not the last education reform there will be. There are going to be more education reforms as well. And there reform in education is very much part of not just what we will do in this Parliament but what we will do in the next Parliament and people should support it."
On Cameron
"The problem as I see it is, we have someone who is saying I'm Conservative to the core one day, I'm the inheritor of New Labour the next day, I'm a Liberal the next day. I think people are going to need answers about policies and about programmes and about big questions for the future of our country and not a glib PR exercise."
So, is this Mr Brown shedding his inhibitions and coming clean that he's prepping to be premier? Oh no, Mr Brown insisted with a smile, he was just seeking "to be a better chancellor, a better minister".
I am out and about and with Gordon Brown on his tour of Britain. Gone is the gruff denial that the succession is an issue. This is a man preparing to be prime minister. More later.
A choreographed climbdown. That was the phrase I used a couple of weeks ago to describe the process whereby the Education Select Committee would produce a report that would call for changes to the government's school reform plan, which ministers would then praise before promising to make the changes called for.
So, it has turned out. When you hear the Education Secretary praise the Select Committee, and its Chairman welcomes her concessions, remember that, in the old phrase, "they would say that wouldn't they" since they jointly plotted the production of a report designed to give the government an elegant means of compromising with its critics.
Climbdown is not a phrase likely to come from the Prime Minister this morning. The worry I'd have if I was a rebel welcoming the language of these concessions is that the government's most radical reformers seem untroubled by any of them.
Tony Blair will be able to say that "the direction of travel" remains the same as before - more freedoms for schools and a greater diversity of people who set up and run schools - and all he's conceded is reassurances and safeguards. So how do should you judge the changes on offer?
On the vexed question of backdoor selection, ministers are promising more policing of the existing admissions code and more information on how it's operating, but not greater council power to do anything other than complain about the outcome. The question for the rebels is whether this will radically alter the way schools can pick pupils now?
On councils' right to set up and run new schools - the biggest concession - councils will still need the permission of ministers to bid and to win a competition in which other groups - charities, voluntary bodies, private sponsors - may be chosen instead by an independent adjudicator. The rebels will ask whether this will really mean many more new council or "community schools"?
What of the Tories? Forget all the talk of double crossing and switching sides at the last minute to catch out the government. David Cameron wants to vote for these reforms. He believes it demonstrates his commitment to a new style of politics. He believes it lays claim for the Tories to being reformers of state education rather than plotters of the best way to escape it. He knows that voting against now would be used to confirm that he's a policy "flip flopper".
Lastly he, and the Prime Minister as it happens, knows that the only question that really matters for Tony Blair's survival is whether he can get his own side to back his reforms.
Now that the rebels are talking about the small print and not opposing the whole thrust of the Bill the likelihood has to be that the PM gets his way with Tory support. Last night some rebels who hailed the headlines of the climbdown reacted warily to the detail.
If Tony Blair does grows confident of victory I suspect he'll look for an artificial device to try to split the Tories and force many of them to vote against his Bill. This chess game still has many moves to go.
