Amid a growing crisis of confidence in the government, Tony Blair has insisted that he will reveal evidence which proves his case against Iraq.

Faced with Labour demands for an inquiry over the failure to locate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the prime minister said he would assemble the evidence and "present it properly".

His comments followed a blistering attack by Clare Short - who accused Blair of building the case for war "around three big deceits".

Short's move came amid a concerted campaign by Labour rebels angered at the failure to account for Saddam's much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction.

A YouGov opinion poll conducted for today's Telegraph finds that 44 per cent of voters feel they had been misled about the threat of illegal weapons.

Former foreign secretary Robin Cook said that the government had made a "monumental blunder" over Iraq.

His points were echoed by Short who argued that: "The suggestion that there was a risk of chemical and biological weapons being weaponised and threatening us in a short time was spin.

"That didn't come from the security services. I have concluded that the PM decided to go to war in August sometime and he duped us all along," the former international development secretary said.

Blair however used an interview with Sky News to rebut the allegations.

"There is no doubt at all that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and has used weapons of mass destruction. There's a reason why we had 12 years of UN resolutions," he said.

As the stakes rise for the prime minister, a series of commentators today warn that the claims could bring down the government unless clear intelligence is found to support Blair's claims.