There is undoubtedly something a little irritating about Mr Blair’s assumption that accountability now means the executive holding the legislature to account. But if debate is to be genuinely informed, rather than simply an exercise in point-scoring, those who face the burden of making momentous choices have the right, occasionally, to ask their interrogators: OK, what would you do?

Yesterday the Prime Minister was asked a necessary, pointed and telling question by ITN’s political editor, Nick Robinson. What would the Prime Minister say to a mother who had just seen her son sail towards the Gulf and feared he might soon be at war? The sending of men to war is the most momentous decision a Prime Minister can take, and his justifications for so doing have to be clear, convincing and moral. A considerable body of British public opinion does not believe the Government’s policy towards Iraq is clear, they are not convinced that sending a force to the Gulf is at all necessary and they fear that any military action by the UK and the US would be profoundly immoral.

To those who harbour honest doubts, for the best of reasons, the Prime Minister yesterday threw down a challenge. What would you do? What would happen if the British Government changed course?

The critics of the Prime Minister raise a series of objections. The press articulated many of them at the Prime Minister’s news conference yesterday: North Korea is a more pressing crisis than Iraq; the war against terror suffers by our concentration on President Saddam Hussein; the current build-up of forces is a reckless exercise in sabre-rattling; and, above all, the bellicosity of the US and the UK is undermining the authority of the United Nations.

The questions raised yesterday reflected the views of mainstream sceptics, and deserve to be taken seriously. Which means scrutinising the alternative courses enjoined on Mr Blair as closely as the Prime Minister himself is being held to account.

Those who are worried about the growing danger from North Korea and the continuing threat from al-Qaeda need to consider what effect a slackening of pressure on Saddam now would have on their concerns. Would North Korea believe the West was more serious about dealing with nuclear proliferation if we relaxed our approach towards Iraq? Wouldn’t a Western retreat from holding Saddam to account confirm the calculation Osama bin Laden made about the US after its pullout from Somalia and emptily symbolic bombing of a Sudanese chemical factory, that it had not the resolution to stay the course in any fight? And wouldn’t that embolden every jihadist from Dar es Salaam to Dorset into believing that their enemies, which is to say us, were indeed decadent and ripe for defeat?

To those who are worried that the military build-up closes off options, and betrays contempt for the UN, another set of questions might be put. Do they believe that Saddam should be free to continue developing weapons which could bring devastation to hundred of thousands? Are they happy to run the risk of such weapons being unleashed by him or, at a deniable distance, by the sort of terrorists with whom he has been willing to work in the past?

Saddam will not stop unless he is disarmed or removed from power. Work towards disarming him may be made by the UN weapons inspectors, but their presence has been secured only by the threat of force. And any prospect of Saddam’s departure from power with the minimum of bloodshed, through a possible palace coup, depends on Iraqi elites recognising that the West is in a position to mount a formidable attack. The most visible, and comprehensive, preparation for war is therefore the best means of achieving a relatively peaceful solution, if one is at all available.

If Saddam does not disarm, or depart — and both are highly unlikely — military action will be necessary. Not only is it unthinkable for anyone charged with the security of the British people to leave a hostile mass-murderer with the means of mass murder on a scale never before known, it would also be fatal to any hopes of a meaningful international order to draw back from the use of force.

All the talk of respect for the UN which places the securing of yet another resolution as the top priority in this crisis is misguided; the elevation of process over outcome. Unless the UN disarms or removes Saddam, its resolutions will have no force, because it will have been seen to funk the use of force when a challenge came. It would go the way of the League of Nations, its resolutions offering no more protection to the world than a papier-mâché castle, ready to be kicked by any passing tyrant into history’s dustbin.

The Prime Minister told us yesterday that his job was “sometimes to say the things people don’t want to hear”. From a congenital people-pleaser, it was a telling statement, a demonstration that he realises statesmanship involves taking decisions in which there is no difference to split, no happy “third way” between undesirable options. The public, and the press, would very much like there to be a third way of dealing with Saddam which doesn’t leave us in danger or involve young men taking ships to a war zone. The uncomfortable truth is, there isn’t.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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