'Brown must rescue PM on fees'

Gordon Brown is being criticised bitterly by Tony Blair's senior allies for failing to curb the Labour MPs' revolt against top-up tuition fees.

Downing Street fears it could still lose the key Commons vote next week, with between 85 and 100 backbenchers determined to vote against the Government.

Although the Chancellor has called in public for MPs to back Mr Blair, some of his closest supporters are leading the revolt.

One of the Prime Minister's most senior advisers told the Evening Standard: "If the vote were held today we would lose it. Brown's people on the backbenches are the key to this. The decisive factor is Gordon's intervention. He has to say to them more clearly and unambiguously than he has so far, 'you will not prosper under any future leadership of mine if you do not back your leader on this matter'."

More than 150 Labour MPs have criticised plans to impose variable top-up tuition fees of up to £3,000 a year. At the start of the month more than 100 were ready to vote against the Government, and only a handful have said they were backing down.

One leading rebel is Nick Brown, the former chief whip and a close friend of the Chancellor. Organising the rebels is former deputy chief whip George Mudie, another Brown ally.

He admitted talking to the Liberal Democrats about tactics on next week's vote, a move which will embarrass the rebels and encourage wavering MPs to fall in behind Mr Blair. At least one emissary has been sent from the Blair camp in recent days to request that Mr Brown give more emphasis to the need to face down the rebels.

No10 has been frustrated by what some believe to have been halfhearted support on the fees Bill from Mr Brown, despite the Chancellor's endorsement of the policy itself and his help in talking to groups of wavering MPs in an attempt to win them round to the Government's point of view.

In particular, Mr Blair's strategists believe that a public warning to potential rebels from the Chancellor is overdue. The adviser said: "If Gordon inherits the crown tainted by helping bring about the fall of Blair over a flagship reform, he could end up leading a divided party and that would be the best news Michael Howard could possibly have."

The source said that defeat in the tuition fees vote, on the eve of the Hutton Report's publication, would be the "beginning of the end" for Mr Blair.