LONDON LETTER/Frank Millar: A happy New Year - and more than the usual seasonal goodwill in and about, and for, the denizens of Britain's most famous street.
No, not Coronation Street, where death and heartache again proved the vital ingredients of festive soap - but for the official residents of Number 11 Downing Street as they celebrate a birth and the joyous affirmation of hope for the future.
The birth of little Jennifer Brown caused more than the usual excitement by her premature arrival last Friday, a whole seven weeks early, weighing in at just 2lb 4oz.
The emergency Caesarean ordered by Sarah Brown's doctors, coupled with the baby's weight and size, meant joy tinged with considerable anxiety for the chancellor and his wife.
That anxiety was widely shared, as was the relief, among people of all political persuasions and none, at confirmation that Jennifer was breathing independently and would be fine after a protracted stay at Forth Park Maternity Hospital in Kirkcaldy.
And it would have been a cold heart indeed which did not warm to Gordon Brown, beaming and besotted, as he spoke of his shared experience with every other man who had held his - the most beautiful - daughter in the world.
Non-New Labourites will complain he has not yet faced the test of difficult times.
However, Gordon Brown has built considerable reserves of admiration during almost five years as chancellor.
As they carry on spending as if there's no tomorrow, Britain's shopaholics are plainly trusting in his assurance that the UK is better placed than most to withstand any sustained economic downturn.
Having risked supporting Mr Blair for a second term, moreover, key elements of the Eurosceptic press here have an each-way bet on Mr Brown - backing the famously brooding and ambitious chancellor to stop Europhiles such as Peter Hain in their tracks, declare his "economic tests" far from satisfied and nothing at all "inevitable" about British membership of the single currency.
Brooding and ambitious (he only recently declined to say he did not have a secret understanding with Mr Blair about the succession, thus sustaining the belief that he at least thinks he has) Mr Brown is also famously truculent and dour, a high-handed chancellor said to inspire respect rather than affection among ministerial colleagues resentful of his powerful reach across the spread of Whitehall departments.
Now, suddenly, he finds himself awash in it - affection - as commentators and pundits reassess the doting father previously cast the odd fellow in a political "marriage" to the altogether-more-rounded chap next door.
Normal political calculations and considerations are seldom set aside for long, however.
So inevitably news reports of Jennifer's arrival allowed that this happy event for the proud mother and father might have some political significance too.
Specifically, the question for some close Brown watchers was whether the arrival of a family would encourage his belief that Mr Blair should consider making way for him. One report indeed suggested he had told the prime minister as much to his face.
As he enjoys his paternity leave and attends to his family, such thoughts may be far from the chancellor's mind. Maybe, indeed, the famed workaholic will decide that the prospect of the top job pales beside the joys of late parenthood, and that Tony is welcome to stay put in Number 10.
But few, it must be said, would bet on it, and the expectation must be that after a respectable interval the Blair/Brown relationship will once more prove the most dominant, intriguing and important relationship in British politics.
This is not good news for the Tories. As Britons carried their hangovers back to work yesterday, they faced lengthy train delays and the threat of strikes and more disruption to come.
With hospitals likewise in a mess, trades union leaders urged Mr Blair to forget about a euro referendum and concentrate on delivery of the promised world-class public services. Yet even as that referendum looks more likely, Mr Iain Duncan Smith has yet to define a convincing position on the one issue on which the Tory party currently carries majority support.
And the suspicion must be that when Mr Blair comes finally to decide on the euro, it will be the chancellor and not the Tory leader he is watching over his shoulder.