By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

Cunningham: Highlighted splits

Just 12 hours after he escaped defeat at the hands of his MPs by the narrowest of margins, leading loyalist and former minister Jack Cunningham likened the rebels to the hard-left Militant tendency which was accused of attempting to take over the party in the 1980s.

He suggested the rebels were behaving like a party within a party and had been openly planning to bring down the government.

It was just about the most emotive language the man once dubbed "the minister for the Today programme" could have used.

Worse, no one was left in any doubt that the people he was levelling the criticism at were the so-called Brownies - the backbenchers who support Chancellor Gordon Brown.

Hard left

"I spent 18 years in opposition fighting on many fronts against, in particular, Militant tendency, the hard left, to stop the development of a party within a party. That is another lesson the parliamentary Labour party must learn," he said.

Claims of Brown-Blair split

And he referred specifically to the Chancellor's ally, former whip Nick Brown and his deputy George Mudie, who led the fees rebellion.

Asked on the BBC's Today programme if he was really likening them to Militant, he said: "A former chief whip, a former deputy chief whip openly, coherently working and planning to bring defeat to their own government?

"It gets perilously close to that doesn't it?"

What Mr Cunningham did in a couple of sentences was suggest Labour is now split between the Blairites and the Brownies.

It has always been seen as likely that the relationship and strains between the prime minister and his would-be successor would dominate the second New Labour government.

The prime minister has persistently denied any rifts and dismissed growing suspicions he may have done a deal to hand over power to the chancellor in the not-too-distant future.

Dictatorial style

But all that speculation has now erupted again with the fees rebellion. And Mr Cunningham has, in effect, confirmed the split.

Kinnock took on the left

What many in Westminster have claimed in the wake of Mr Blair's wafer thin victory is that the prime minister is now almost the prisoner of his rebels and, more, his chancellor.

They have put down the clearest possible marker that they will not put up with his allegedly dictatorial style of leadership any longer.

Meanwhile, Mr Brown remains publicly loyal, presumably happy to be written up as the man who bailed out the prime minister once again in his hour of need, and biding his time.

Militants expelled

But if Mr Cunningham was reflecting Mr Blair's view, then it appears the prime minister is not about to roll over but may be preparing for a bloody battle with his dissenters.

His predecessor Neil Kinnock won great admiration in the Labour movement when he successfully took on and then expelled Militants from the party.

But most of the rebels will be furious they have been likened to the Marxists who caused Labour so much pain in the 1980s.

They will claim they were sticking to the Labour manifesto pledge not to introduce fees and were acting out of principle.

And few believe the prime minister really wants to engage in this sort of battle.

Partly because there is no certainty he would win it.