Revealed: how Blair rejected Bush's offer to stay out of the Iraq war.

A new book by Anthony Seldon, Peter Snowdon and Daniel Collings, called "Blair Unbound" reveals how George Bush was so worried that the Blair government might fall during the final days leading up to the Iraq war that he offered Blair a way out, and it was a way out which Blair refused to take.

Nine days before the Commons backed military action, despite a rebellion by 139 Labour MPs, President Bush astonished Condoleezza Rice, who was his National Security Adviser, by suggesting that Britain need not join the invasion and could play a less controversial role during the aftermath.

According to the book, the US embassy in London was sending Washington worrying accounts of Mr Blair's position. "We were talking to backbenchers. What we heard was a fairly strident message that there was only so far that we could go, and the UN was extremely important. We heard some very ominous analyses of what could happen," said one official.

Ms Rice told the book's authors: "I remember standing in the Oval Office, and the President said, 'We can't have the British Government fall because of this decision over war.' I said: 'So what are you saying?' He said, 'I have to tell Tony that he doesn't have to do this.'"

Ms Rice's first thought was to call Sir David Manning, her opposite number in Downing Street, to prepare the ground but Mr Bush judged there was no time. "I'm going to call him right now," he said.

"What I want to say to you is that my last choice is to have your government go down," he told Mr Blair. "We don't want that to happen under any circumstances. I really mean that."

If it would help, he would let Mr Blair "drop out of the coalition" and the US would find some other way for Britain to participate. Ms Rice described the conversation as "very emotional" for the President.

Mr Blair replied: "I said I'm with you. I mean it." One confidant explained: "Having taken it so far, backing out seemed to him a rather pathetic thing to do."

So, in order to avoid looking "pathetic" Blair ordered young Brits to war, despite the fact that the US never really needed the British for the invasion as anything other than a fig leaf to convince their own citizens that Bush was actually leading a coalition of nations rather than engaging in the blatant act of unilateralism which he was actually indulging himself in.

Blair has never publicly regretted his decision, always insisting that it was the right thing to do. I suppose when one makes a decision that is so wrong - which will come to define your premiership - you have no option other than to decide that, somewhere down the line, history will exonerate you.

For Blair certainly knew that Iraq was the reason for his drastically reduced majority when he faced the British public for the third time.

As the election results came in, a deeply depressed Mr Blair –who was with his family and friends at Myrobella, his constituency home – was completely unnerved when Labour lost Putney to the Conservatives at 12.35am. “If we lost this we are going to lose the lot,” he said to Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff.

Later he went out into the garden in the “freezing cold” with his long-time aides Alastair Campbell and Sally Morgan. According to the book, “he started muttering things such as ‘It’s all my fault’ and ‘Iraq’”. “It was a pretty grim hour or so,” Ms Morgan said.

And certainly after that third election, Blair realised that his power over his party was almost fatally weakened.

At the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party) meeting the following Monday, for the first time MPs stood up and challenged his leadership, saying that MPs had lost their seats because of his continuation as leader. Former minister Peter Kilfoyle put it to him directly that ‘the sooner he stood down the better off the party would be as he had become a negative factor’. There was a deadly silence. The mood was sombre. Blair responded that he needed time and space and MPs owed it to him to be loyal until the handover.

“But the stories began about how long he could and should survive".

And all of this happened because Blair, in his desire to strut across the world stage, turned down Bush's offer for the British to take a less aggressive stance in the Iraq war.

I know publicly Blair will never announce a moment's regret, but I wonder if, privately, he ever allows himself to wonder what might have been had he not tied himself so tenaciously to Bush's war of choice.

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Tags: Blair, Bush, Iraq war, Condi Rice, Parliamentary revolt