The Chilcot Report into the Iraq War was finally due to be published this week.
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In televised comments from a news conference in central London, Blair said the 2003 invasion was the “hardest, most momentous, most agonizing decision I took as British prime minister” and accepted mistakes had been made. The Chilcot report did that. The 6,000 page, 2.6 million words report took seven years to produce by a team headed by ex-civil servant Sir John Chilcot.
Mr Corbyn told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show: “I urge colleagues to read the Butler report and read the Chilcot report about the way in which Parliament was denied the information it should have had, the way in which there was lack of preparations for the post-invasion situation in Iraq and the way there were assertions of weapons of mass destruction”.
A public rally calling for Tony Blair to face a “war crimes” trial has been organised by a Belfast city councillor Matt Collins.
Davis is one of a number of MPs from several parties making the call.
The Conservative MP David Davis, backed by the SNP’s Alex Salmond, has said he will present on Thursday the motion accusing the former prime minister of misleading parliament.
Prescott’s about-face is the latest fallout from the release of the Chilcot Report, which detailed the deceptions and intelligence failures that led to the vote that saw the U.K. join the United States in its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. They have had to look for alternative means after it became clear that the International Criminal Court in the Hague did not have a mandate to prosecute the former prime minister.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he is likely to back a House of Commons motion accusing his predecessor Tony Blair of misleading parliament over the Iraq war. Corbyn opposed the war as a backbencher and last week took the unprecedented step of apologising for Labour’s role in the conflict, to the dismay of some in his party.
“The timing of the decision was clearly created to endorse an nearly immediate action for us to go to war”.
Asked if he would back the motion, he said: “I haven’t seen it yet, but I think I probably would”.
Tony Blair said he understood why some families of service personnel killed in Iraq “can never forgive me” as he continued to defend his actions following the damning report by Sir John Chilcot into the war.
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“In 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq War, it was illegal”, he said, adding that “with great sadness and anger” he “now believes him to be right”.
