EVIDENTLY Tony Blair is unfazed by the back-bench attack on his welfare reform proposals. But his determination may yet be sorely tested in the coming months by the rebels.

Certainly he is sticking by his shake-up of the £110 billion welfare system more resolutely than he did when the smaller revolt among Labour MPs in December, 1997, over cuts to lone parents' benefits produced some nervous back-tracking and subsequently toppled Harriet Harman off the front bench.

For, in the face of the biggest back-bench rebellion the government has faced, when last week its majority was slashed from 176 to 140 over the proposal to cut benefits for the disabled, Mr Blair was standing firm at Prime Minister's Question Time insisting that the changes were "right in principle" and that they would go forward.

And this comes after he had squared up to his critics and bluntly told them he expected Labour MPs to act as ambassadors for government policy, not as conduits for their constituents' complaints. But whether this is characteristic of an autocratic stamp, which many perceive marks the Blair regime, or a display for firm leadership and positive adherence to the pledges Mr Blair made soon after the election to sort out the manifestly-bloated benefits system, hardly matters at this stage.

For these are the early rounds of what promises to be a long and bruising bout.

That is because the issue is both a test of Labour's own ethics - to which many MPs evidently consider that welfare reform and such things as the means testing of benefits are an anathema - and an example of the political paradox that gives a government with a huge majority the latitude to push through such radical measures while, at the same time, exposing it to the scope for large-scale dissent in its own ranks.

We can look forward to an even larger rebellion in the Commons next month over this issue if, as is likely, the Lords throw out the proposal next month.

And it is also possible that peers who are opposed to the cuts may decide instead to delay the Welfare Bill's progress and their vote on it until after the summer recess, so that it is flung like fat on the fire on to the agenda of the Labour Party annual conference in the autumn where critics would seek to engineer a humiliating vote against the proposals and, in turn, a climb-down by the leadership.

Mr Blair is facing up boldly to his opponents now, but, on this, he and New Labour confront possibly the biggest test of command, style and principle since the battle to junk Clause Four.

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