London, Jan. 27 (Reuters): Tony Blair rode into the worst storm of a commanding premiership today when he risked defeat by his party in parliament and castigation by a judge over the suicide of Britain’s top Iraq weapons expert.

The chances of a parliamentary humiliation for the Prime Minister receded at the last minute as a leading rebel in his Labour Party switched to back Blair’s controversial higher education bill and said others would follow him.

Elected in 1997 by a landslide, Blair had been staring down the barrel, with dozens in a party he rescued from the electoral wilderness vowing to rise up over the issue of student fees. The vote remained on a knife-edge, albeit shifting his way.

If Blair’s authority over his own party is under question in parliament, it is his trust with the voters that will come under scrutiny with tomorrow’s release of judge Lord Hutton’s report into the suicide of David Kelly. The loss of either attribute could derail a premiership that has been characterised by strong approval ratings among voters and weak opposition in Westminster.

“With a majority of 161, defeat would be extraordinary, a crushing blow to morale,” Professor Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford University, said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said that with just hours to go until the vote, the premier risked humiliating defeat. “On the way the figures are at the moment, to be absolutely honest, the government will get defeated,” he told BBC radio.

But then leading rebel Nick Brown declared a last-minute conversion, raising the prospect that the respected former cabinet minister could rally malcontents and save Blair’s day.

“The concessions that the government have made are good enough for me,” he said. “I’m speaking only for myself but I do know that many parliamentary colleagues feel the same way as me,” he added. Speculation swiftly followed that Blair’s powerful finance minister and putative rival for power Gordon Brown had twisted arms at a morning meeting with rebels to rescue his boss.

Rejection of Blair’s plans to make university students pay more — coupled with the threat of criticism by Hutton — would wound him, perhaps fatally.