After their war summit in the Azores, the three leaders made it abundantly clear they are going to war against Saddam come what may - possibly as soon as Monday night.

And they gave the UN just 24 hours to get on board or be consigned to the sidelines and face the greatest crisis in its history.

Only the hopelessly optimistic believe there will be any last-minute changes of heart.

And, barring an eleventh hour reverse by France, the three leaders will fail to get the support they want.

They probably will not even go to a vote. So there will be the long-expected war.

It will be without a second UN resolution and it will land Tony Blair with the nightmare he had wanted to avoid at all cost.

He returned to London to face a crisis cabinet meeting and to decide whether to give MPs a vote before action is launched.

Few believe that will happen for the simple reason that a pre-war vote would only serve to highlight and even enlarge the opposition.

Mr Blair is already set to lose at least two cabinet ministers as a result.

Clare Short is already committed to resigning and Robin Cook is virtually certain to follow suit.

And there may be other ministerial casualties. Tessa Jowell, Michael Meacher, Larry Whitty and even Alistair Darling have expressed concerns over this war.

Rebellion

He will face a major rebellion from his own backbeches with suggestions as many as 150 Labour MPs will vote against him when they are given the chance.

And he will see his government being, in effect, propped up by the Conservative Party.

He will also be going into this conflict against a majority of the British people if recent opinion polls are to be believed.

It is impossible to over state the seriousness of this for the prime minister.

Of all the possibilities in front of him when this process started almost five months ago, this was the one he most feared. And he kept insisting it would not come to this.

But it has. And his fate is now irretrievably linked with Saddam's.

While the war lasts there will be a sort of unity as even opponents rally behind the British forces laying their lives on the line.

But talk about the prime minister's future will remain just under the surface.

'Window dressing'

And, make no mistake, his fiercest critics will want rid of him once it is all over.

He will fight back - blaming the French for making war inevitable and insisting he fought tooth and nail and to the very last for a second resolution.

That, of course, is what the Azores summit was all about.

It showed, even just hours away from war, the prime minister was still pressing for a diplomatic solution.

His critics at home were unimpressed. Leading rebel Graham Allen described it all as "window dressing".

The prime minister will never win over Mr Allen or his numerous supporters.

His fate now depends almost entirely on how this war unfolds. And on that, no one can be certain.