As Britain prepares for a war unlike any it has ever known, Tony Blair exudes cool command. Nor on this occasion is the prime ministerial image the product of New Labour "spin." From the very start - as those first unforgettable images of carnage and death were transmitted around the globe - Mr Blair has been a model of clarity, purpose and resolution.
The Prime Minister's emotional literacy, of course, is not to everyone's taste. For some he remains as they cast him on the morning after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales - the ultimate thespian, a professional actor able always to empathise with the mood of his audience.
But watching him address the TUC Congress on the afternoon of September 11th it was instantly clear that - beyond real and raw emotion - there was cold judgment too. Even as the listener momentarily balked at his description of this "new" unfolding threat - and while the full horror of the atrocities in America could only be guessed at - Mr Blair had already grasped the hideous nature of "mass terrorism".
He was instantly clear. The first task was to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States in framing the appropriate response and seeking to bring those responsible to justice. Beyond that, Mr Blair identified the need to build a truly international coalition committed to tracking and dismantling the support systems of those prepared to inflict previously unimagined slaughter and suffering.
Since then he has been unceasing in his efforts to secure and sustain that international consensus, travelling some 9,000 miles in three days to Germany and France, America and Brussels. Some snorted that President Chirac and Mr Gerhard Schr÷der hardly needed Mr Blair's help in drawing the right conclusions about the terrorist threat. Others wondered why, in the age of modern communication, he needed to travel to Washington and New York at all.
This will hardly have been the mood of the relatives of some of the 500 Britons believed to have perished in the World Trade Centre, as Mr Blair joined them in a special memorial service in New York. Nor, emphatically, was it the mood in Washington, where President Bush hailed Mr Blair, telling Congress America had "no truer friend than Great Britain."
The "special relationship" between Britain and the US is frequently mocked inside both countries and, in truth, has often appeared less meaningful than easy sentiment would suggest.
However the practical, as well as the sentimental, transatlantic bond, remains rooted in the shared experience of the Second world war, and its renewal at this point in history was perhaps the more remarkable because Mr Blair and Mr Bush would not normally make for natural allies.
Having borrowed heavily from Bill Clinton's New Democrats in its own search for electability, New Labour's chattering elite was decidedly sniffy this time last year about the prospect of 'Dubya' in the White House. Not any more. If we are "all New Yorkers now" then "Bush is the only President we have", as one member of a New Labour think-tank confided last week.
Downing Street denies that Mr Blair's early heady rhetoric was a device to buy restraining influence - a public route to private pressure against a kneejerk reaction by American hawks.
And again - notwithstanding their reputation for spin - it seems this can be taken at face value.
Chris Patten, one of Britain's EU Commissioners, argued early on that the very idea was "deeply patronising" of the President and, in particular, of those around him who had been through the Gulf War and needed no lectures from anyone about the need to carry support in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Nonetheless, Mr Blair's ready and unequivocal support will have won him influence in Washington in the vital decision-making days ahead. Moreover, even Conservative critics believe the Prime Minister's has been an important influence in Europe, and not least in Germany where he remains popular. And while Labour's Euro-zealots fret about what all this pro-Americanism might mean for their pet project, Mr Blair will be content, at least for now, that he is making flesh of his vision of Britain as bridge between America and Europe.
Downing Street will be content, too, that Mr Blair is riding high in the polls, the latest showing 72 per cent approval for his response to the crisis despite the imminence of military engagement.
Courtesy of the pre-planned military exercise, Operation Swift Sword, Britain by this weekend will have some 23,000 servicemen in Oman. The biggest Royal Navy deployment since the Falklands War involves Tornado aircraft, hundreds of armoured vehicles, Challenger tanks, RAF Harrier GR7s, Sea Harriers and Sea King and Lynx helicopters in two naval task forces, led by HMS Illustrious, also comprising destroyers, submarines, frigates, assault ships and amphibious craft.
However if this build-up is reminiscent of Operation Desert Storm, the signal from Washington is that this will be a very different war. The SAS is reputed to have already established a significant presence in the region and the assumption here is that it will play a key role in any ground-level assault on Osama bin Laden and the terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
Indeed the expectation is growing in some quarters that - far from D-Day landings and spectacular bombing missions - this may translate into a long, largely secret war, conducted often under cover of darkness, with no attendant television cameras and no reports-back until special units have returned to bases with missions accomplished.
The covert nature of the enemy, of course, attends and complicates contingency planning at home, while fuelling the anxiety evident across the country.
An extra 1,500 police officers will again be on duty this weekend in London as part of a series of measures the Metropolitan Commissioner describes as unparalleled. Across Britain security has been increased around key civilian sites such as water utilities, reservoirs and electricity generators. Hospitals have been ordered to upgrade major incident plans to accommodate the possibility of mass casualty, with local planners already designated to co-ordinate regional responses.
No decision has apparently been taken as to whether Mr Blair will formalise a war cabinet once military action is under way, while officials continue to meet - at present without ministers - in the Cobra contingency planning committee to review preparedness to deal with missile strikes or bomb or biological attacks.
While MI5 and MI6 are reportedly working flat-out with the CIA and other intelligence agencies to prevent terrorists gaining the facility for biological or chemical warfare, army surplus stores report increased sales of gas masks and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) protective suits.
The Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, complained earlier this week about "alarmist" newspaper accounts of this threat. But it was Mr Hoon who had raised the alarm a week earlier, clearly saying this was a possibility which could not be ruled out, while offering no consequent assurance to the public about the country's state of readiness in terms of vaccination and quarantine plans.
And public fearfulness will have been increased by the disclosure that, on the day Mr Hoon admonished the press, the US Deputy Defence Secretary told him and other NATO ministers of the "alarming coincidence between states that harbour international terrorists and....states that have active, maturing programmes of WMD (weapons of mass destruction."
Likewise, public confidence received a knock on Thursday after Mr Blair's repeated assurance that there is at this point no evidence of any specific threat against the UK.
Just hours later the Europe Minister, Peter Hain, told a BBC television audience he had seen bin Laden's plans for more "high impact" attacks.
For all the current political consensus and high-level public support for Mr Blair, the apprehension here really is palpable.
There seems no appetite for jingoism. And the desire to see bin Laden and his fellow travellers taken out comes with sickening dread at the thought of a war which might truly be without end.
The workers in the Nat West tower, at Sellafield, in the House of Commons - they know that the danger is perilously close. And that for Mr Blair, and the country, it is just beginning.