Tony Blair is determined to stick to the course set out because he truly believes the alternative unthinkable, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Can it ever be glad confident morning again for Tony Blair? To pose the question is to illustrate the convulsion currently gripping large sections of the British Labour Party.
Magic lost, they say, can never be regained. And Mr Blair's Labour doubters - suddenly more numerous and more mutinous - are saying similar things now about his leadership and future prospects. Whatever the outcome of the war, it is declared with great weight and seeming wisdom, his full command will never be restored.
So, as we enter the endgame over Iraq, some on the Labour back benches cheerfully anticipate the end of Mr Blair. Indeed, even before the first shots are fired in anger over Baghdad, some think it time to plan for his replacement.
For incredibly, as the Prime Minister faces that loneliest moment and the commitment of troops to action, some of his own troops at Westminster are seriously promoting the case for a special party conference to invite him to consider his position.
Leave aside the fact that many of those MPs now discovering their muscle only made it to the House of Commons on the back of a Blairite crusade for respectability and electability which resulted in an unprecedented second full term for Labour less than two years ago. Leave aside, too, the probability that - even with a country gasping to ditch the Tories - Labour's emergence from 18 years in the wilderness would have been considerably less comprehensive under any other leader.
The idea that the party - with all the baggage which for so long made it unelectable - could challenge its leader as he prepares to commit a third of the British army to war against a dictator 12 years in defiance of the United Nations simply beggars belief.
At a stroke, the British people would be invited to reconsider their assessment of Labour as a serious party of government, with all the attendant consequences and risks for any on the current front bench thinking to succeed him eventually.
The same might be said of the hope which briefly took hold on Tuesday night, as anti-war rebels seized on Donald Rumsfeld's assertion that the US could go it alone as providing a potential "escape clause" for Mr Blair. Serious commentators pursued the possibility that Mr Blair might finally bow to defeat at the Security Council, confess (for this is what it would have meant) that Resolution 1441 provided no sure legal basis for war (and that his protestations to the contrary had been false and misleading), and give the order to those 40,000 troops to stand down.
As they arrived for Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, political journalists and government insiders alike shook their heads in disbelief. Sure, the first response of the British public might be one of relief. But after that? As they observed British servicemen and women reduced to a support role, heads bowed and eyes averted as their American comrades flew into action? And as the inquest turned to the political fallout in terms of the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States, and the leadership-in-Europe role now indisputably claimed by French President Chirac? The humiliation of Mr Blair in such circumstances would surely have been as nothing compared to the loss of pride and confidence which would have swept a British nation grown used to punching above its weight on the international stage.
It simply couldn't be, could it? If his critics on the left ever thought otherwise, Mr Blair arrived in the Commons chamber determined to leave them in no doubt. He continued to work flat-out for a second UN resolution but had legal basis enough in resolution 1441.
And he was determined to stick to the course set out because he truly believes the alternative unthinkable - in terms of the peace and security of a world in which other tyrants see Saddam let off the hook and draw their own conclusions from the lost authority of the United Nations.
This is the essential point which some on the left are only finally getting. As Mr Blair told the Guardian's Jackie Ashley the other week: it's worse than his critics think, he really does believe.
And while he would undoubtedly like that second resolution, he now seems content - for good or ill - to let history be his judge.