Labour MPs helped vote down a motion seeking to hold former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, accountable for allegedly misleading parliament during the run up to the 2003 Iraq war, Wednesday.
The motion, put by former leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond – who is the current foreign affairs spokesman for the party – called for a parliamentary investigation into Blair’s actions, and potentially take action against him.
Drawing on the results of the recent Chilcot inquiry, the motion said that there was:
substantial evidence of misleading information being presented by the then prime minister and others on the development of the then government’s policy towards the invasion of Iraq.
Salmond told Parliament that Blair was “very much a personal campaign, unbeknownst to cabinet and indeed to parliament”
Going on to say that
What Iraq demonstrates is that currently at least there are no effective checks and balances in our system … The prime minister had the ability to create the circumstances in which this house followed him into an illegal conflict.
Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been a stern opponent of Blair – particularly on the issue of Iraq – was absent from parliament, attending a ‘longstanding engagement’ according to a statement. Several of his key allies were also absent. The leadership did whip MPs to vote against the motion but only a ‘one-line whip’ not the usual ‘three line whip’ implying that it did not wish to make a strong statement against the motion.
It's deja vu, the Tory and Labour front-benches that took us into the war have failed to hold Blair to account.https://t.co/L8Y28Cq52Q
— Alex Salmond (@AlexSalmond) November 30, 2016
In this entirely failed campaign to abort Corbyn’s spectacular election victory last summer, Blair himself was explicit: “I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.” His remaining followers in the party – few in number but still entrenched in some key positions of power – seem to have taken this as rallying cry
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