"I will contest that vote with everything I've got."
That was the defiant message from Theresa May as she announced that she was cancelling a meeting with Leo Varadkar to try to win her vote of no confidence later this evening.
"I was due to travel to Dublin to continue that work but will remain in London," she said referring to her meeting with her Dutch and German counterparts yesterday adding that the vote of no confidence was not "in the national interest".
"The British public want us to get on with it," she stated outside Number 10 Downing Street.
"We must and we shall move ahead with the referendum vote."
The vote was triggered the vote after 48 Tory MPs sent letters seeking her resignation just hours after Ms May was warned by EU leaders there will be no changes to the Brexit backstop deal.
In a statement this morning, the chair of the back bench 1922 committee Graham Brady said the required 48 letters needed to force a vote has been reached.
"The threshold of 15% of the parliamentary party seeking a vote of no confidence in the leader of the Conservative party has been reached," he said.
One of those who handed in a letter was Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen.
He says he lost hope in Mrs May after her appeal to European leaders yesterday was apparently rebuffed:
"Effectively the Prime Minister has been drowning politically and Angela Merkel is throwing buckets of water at her.
"It's not a good position to be in, I don't think Theresa May can lead us forward now."
However, Ms May hit back at the party colleagues saying that this vote threatened to hand Brexit negotiations "to opposition MPs."
"One of their first acts," she said of a prospective new Prime Minister, "would be extending or rescinding Article 50 - delaying or even stopping Brexit."
The result of the confidence vote is expected at 9 o'clock tonight.
Teresa May needs more than half of the 318 MPs to back her to remain in office.
Labour's Barry Gardiner says there should be a general election instead of a confidence vote:
"I'm not interested quite honestly in a change simply in Prime Minister," he said.
I think what we need is a change of Government to address the real problems that there are in our society