Change of heart puts career back on track.

Byline: By Paul Linford 

What led Newcastle MP Nick Brown to make his eleventh-hour switch on top-up fees? Political Editor Paul Linford on the anatomy of a U-turn.

When at around 10.30am yesterday, it emerged that Nick Brown had agreed to support the Government in last night's vote on university top-up fees, the shock-waves could almost be felt across Westminster.

Until that moment, the former Chief Whip and Newcastle East MP had been the main organiser of a rebellion that at one point threatened to bring about a humiliating defeat for Tony Blair.

But with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps the real surprise was that such a consummate party fixer should have found himself leading the rebel camp in the first place.

If yesterday's U-turn flew in the face of everything Mr Brown has said and written about this issue, it was at least consistent with his career as a politician for whom doing deals comes naturally.

There are by and large two sorts of politicians - those who lead from the front and seek to shift the boundaries of public opinion, and those for whom politics is the art of the possible.

Nick Brown has always been one of the latter, skilled in the art of compromise and more at home in the back rooms of power than in front of the cameras.

Although he made it clear he voted for the Bill with great reluctance, there is a part of Mr Brown that will have relished the machinations of the past few days.

The horse-trading, the intense late-night discussions, the head-to-head talks with the big beasts of the party - all will have been milk and honey to a man who longs to be back on the inside track.

The first inkling that Mr Brown was preparing to shift his ground came on Monday, when it emerged he was not returning journalists' calls about his voting intentions.

At around 5.45pm that day, his office telephoned The Journal and backed out of an earlier commitment to write an article explaining in detail why he would be opposing the Higher Education Bill.

Asked whether this meant his position had changed, a spokesman said: "If the package stays the way it is, Mr Brown will vote against the Government."

In fact, we now know that at that very moment, Mr Brown was locked in talks with Mr Blair discussing the terms for a possible deal.

Those talks - brokered by Deputy Premier John Prescott - broke up without an agreement being reached, but once Chancellor Gordon Brown became involved yesterday morning, the deal was back on.

The two Browns - close allies since their early days as young MPs - sat round the table with Mr Blair to thrash out a solution.

And the suspicion at Westminster will be that the unwritten terms of the deal will have gone well beyond the fate of the Higher Education Bill.

For all his principled opposition to top-up fees, Nick Brown would have remained loyal to the Government had Tony Blair not made the mistake of sacking him last June.

If, as many suspect, he has now been promised a permanent return to the top table, then that old loyalty would swiftly have reasserted itself.

As one prominent Brownite put it yesterday: "Basically, he will have been told he can name his job."

The only question, it seems, is whether he will come back under Mr Blair - or whether he will have to wait until his namesake Gordon takes over the reins.