The Week in Politics: PM's tactics are puzzling as rebel MPs plot against him

Tony Blair summoned his advisers to Chequers yesterday to discuss his short-term problems and his long-term strategy. Their main focus was the long term, suggesting that the Prime Minister believes he will survive the storms over the Hutton report and university top-up fees.

"If we can just get through January we will be all right," one of Mr Blair's aides told me. But it is a big "if". Michael Howard undoubtedly scored a bull's-eye at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. By raising Mr Blair's role in the unmasking of the government scientist David Kelly, the Tory leader ensured this will be in the spotlight when Lord Hutton delivers his report. Mr Howard is not much interested in the fate of Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, viewed as the Government's most likely casualty. "Dracula is going for Blair's jugular," one minister said.

To say that the Hutton report it is awaited anxiously in Downing Street is a huge understatement. Mr Blair's aides, used to having the government machine at their disposal, are chewing the carpet.

There is also frustration that the list of concessions that Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, announced on Thursday failed to sway many of the rebel Labour MPs threatening to defeat top-up fees. I am still asking myself how a Labour government has got itself in such a pickle over what Mr Blair rightly told the Cabinet on Thursday was "a very progressive policy". The extra help for students from low-income families and the £15,000 earnings threshold before fees are repaid after graduation means themeasure will redistribute wealth.

But the Government is wary of saying that out loud to avoid frightening the middle classes, which will contribute more to the cost of a university education. Under the present system, children from poor homes subsidise the better off.

As one cabinet minister pointed out, MPs are worried about deterring working-class pupils from going to university, but many know they have to woo middle-class voters in order to keep their seats. A government which once prided itself on its presentational skills has presented a good policy badly. The Higher Education Bill should not deter working-class children, but the headlines about student debt in the past year probably will.

Bizarrely, it took ministers an age to trumpet the good news in their package: the abolition of advance fees. By then, the damage was done in the eyes of many.

Many of Mr Blair's backbenchers are not judging the policy solely on its merits. For some, the breach of Labour's 2001 election manifesto, which opposed top-up fees, is what matters. In private, ministers admit this is an embarrassment, while publicly they hide behind weasel words that the promise is intact because the fees will not take effect until the next election.

For another group of rebels, the real issue is not the fees but a desire to give Mr Blair a bloody nose. They still feel bruised by the way he took the country to war in Iraq and the lack of prior consultation over foundation hospitals and top-up fees. The vote on tuition offers the perfect opportunity for revenge. "The Government has won the argument on fees but may still lose the vote. It is a way of getting back at Blair," one Labour MP said.

Some ministers sacked by Mr Blair are also out for revenge. They would lose no sleep if the Bill is sunk, even if this led to Mr Blair's downfall.

However, even some cabinet ministers are puzzled by the Prime Minister's decision to make the vote an issue of confidence in his leadership. They believe his spirits have perked up after the capture of Saddam Hussein, Libya's decision to scrap its weapons of mass destruction and his Christmas holiday in Egypt.

Since his return, Mr Blair has been immersed in last-minute horse-trading among ministers over the Higher Education Bill. He found Gordon Brown reluctant to approve the concessions demanded by Mr Clarke, who is no friend of the Chancellor. Mr Blair was also frustrated byMr Clarke, who he found rather unflexible when the Government had to change its plans on foundation hospitals to avoid a Commons defeat. But he has been impressed with Alan Johnson, the Higher Education Minister who did not go to university; he looks good for a promotion.

The Government's tactics with its own MPs are also puzzling. Surely the right course is to bombard them with concessions. Instead, we have had a mixture of wooing and threatening.

I expect more concessions in the run-up to the critical vote. This could tip the balance back towards the Government. As one Blair ally said: "We would have to be pretty stupid to lose the vote."

a.grice@independent.co.uk