By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

Milburn led the fightback against rebels

As rebellions go, this one left the world decidedly unshaken.

After all the posturing in the run up to the vote - and with the real possibility that the government's policy on foundation hospitals could be defeated - the rebellion melted away.

It had become increasingly obvious that backbenchers were not ready to deliver anything like the sort of rebuff they handed the prime minister over Iraq.

Some had been bought off by concessions such as the extra �200 million suddenly made available to hospitals.

They will claim that the threat of a serious rebellion had worked by winning these changes.

This is now going to be a running sore in the health service, the Labour Party and the trade unions Frank Dobson List of rebel Labour MPs Full report on battle

Others knew that, with the Tories voting against the government, their actions may just have undermined both Health Secretary Alan Milburn and even the prime minister himself.

And virtually none of them wanted it to go that far.

Most clearly decided to keep their powder dry in order to see how many more concessions they can force from the government during the lengthy committee stage of the bill.

And yet another group were undoubtedly seen off by the whips and their usual mixture of threats, cajoling and bullying.

Not so radical

Lastly, scores of MPs simply did not turn up to vote at all.

The prime minister had done his bit to avert the worst, by meeting MPs individually before the vote.

He had also delivered a series of uncompromising speeches warning that he would not countenance any challenge to his policy on the public services.

He even went further by telling the rebels he was determined to spread his reform to other areas of the services.

What is now unclear, however, is exactly how radical the foundation hospitals policy really is - or will end up.

Final policy

Key pieces of the original proposal - such as giving local hospitals free reign to borrow - have been abandoned.

That was partly as a result of opposition from Chancellor Gordon Brown, who still retains some serious doubts over the bill.

And it now looks likely that even more concessions will be made to ensure the final policy is adopted.

But Mr Blair wants to be able to claim that he has been successful in pushing through a radical piece of policy in the face of party opposition - even though the reality falls short of real radicalism.

So he will be delighted with the outcome which, once again shows that, when push comes to shove, most of his backbenchers still see him as their greatest asset.

The thought of defeating him on a key policy was, therefore, too high a price to pay.

However, there is still some trouble ahead for the prime minister.

The rebels will be pressing their case through the committee stages of the bill.

And, outside Parliament, the unions and others are still expected to oppose the policy.

But the important thing in politics is to win on the day - and the prime minister most certainly did that.