By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent

Domestic politics and life at Westminster, though they carry on, do so in a kind of limbo while more urgent events unfold thousands of miles away.

But return to life they will and when they do, government business managers do not want Mr Blair's first big re-engagement on the domestic front to be dealing with the fall-out of another huge rebellion by his own backbenchers.

Former health secretary Frank Dobson is among the leading rebels

This is why the flagship legislation to create "foundation" hospitals has now been put back until after Easter. A key plank of his second-term agenda, its delay is a sign of serious trouble indeed.

Having gone off to war amid a record revolt by his own MPs, the prime minister doesn't want to "return" to exactly the same thing.

With well over 100 Labour backbenchers having signed the Commons motion attacking his hospital plans, that is exactly what was on the cards had he pressed on with the bill.

Not that Mr Blair has failed to devote any efforts to the issue. Far from it. In a bid to stem the rising opposition, he has called in groups of backbenchers to listen to their concerns.

A private meeting with union leaders, deeply hostile to the plans, is being set up in order to let them have their say face to face as well.

But the charm offensive has failed.

Early on, Labour MPs drew subtle encouragement from Chancellor Gordon Brown's disagreement with the health secretary, Alan Milburn, over how the finances of the new foundation trusts should be organised.

As time has gone on, many of them - former health secretary Frank Dobson among them - have become increasingly convinced that the plans will inevitably lead to a two-tier health service in which foundation hospitals set higher pay rates and poach staff.

NHS 'fragmentation'

Union leaders like the GMB's John Edmonds warn that it will usher in the "fragmentation" of the health service.

Borrowing money from the private sector is another key objection. They also fear that the new arrangements will clear the path for more private sector in the NHS, to the extent even of propping up the profit-making health sector.

What's more, the critics are emboldened in their opposition by the fact that, just as when the Commons debated Iraq, they are reflecting the views of their local parties and natural supporters.

Because for them, regardless of semantic dances by the policy's supporters around whether or not increased involvement of the private sector amounts to privatisation, partial or otherwise, of the NHS, their deeply lodged suspicion is that it does.