Tony Blair could face contempt vote over Iraq war

Tony Blair could face a motion of contempt in the House of Commons over the 2003 invasion of Iraq – a motion that Jeremy Corbyn has said he would probably support.

The motion, set to be tabled by outspoken Conservative MP David Davis and backed by the SNP’s Alex Salmond, alleges that the former prime minister deceived the House of Commons while making the case for Iraq. 

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who this week apologised on behalf of his party for the war despite being having long personally opposed it, said he would “probably” back the motion when asked.

“Parliament must hold to account, including Tony Blair, those who took us into this particular war. That is surely how a parliamentary democracy works. I haven’t seen [the motion] yet, but I think I probably would [back it].”

The motion is likely to debated in the next few weeks if it is accepted by the Commons Speaker, John Bercow.

The landmark Chilcot Inquiry, which has been investigating the 2003 invasion since 2009, said last week that Mr Blair’s intelligence case for the attack on Iraq was “not justified”.  Sir John Chilcot said in his long-awaited report on the Iraq invasion that the legal basis for the war was reached in a way that was “far from satisfactory”, but he did not explicitly say the war was illegal.

Mr Corbyn’s backing comes after John Prescott, the deputy prime minister at the time of the invasion, said Mr Blair had led Parliament into backing an illegal war. Writing in the Sunday Mirror newspaper, Lord Prescott said that following evidence in the Chilcot Report he had come to the conclusion that the war was illegal.

“I will live with the decision of going to war and its catastrophic consequences for the rest of my life,” he wrote.

“In 2004, the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq war, it was illegal. With great sadness and anger, I now believe him to be right.”

Conservative MP David Davis, who is tabling the motion, said that if his motion was accepted by Bercow it could be debated before parliament’s summer recess.

“It’s a bit like contempt of court, essentially by deceit. If you look just at the debate alone, on five different grounds the house was misled – three in terms of the weapons of mass destruction, one in terms of the UN votes were going, and one in terms of the threat, the risks. He might have done one of those accidentally, but five?” Davis said. 

Overall Sir John Chilcot, who chaired the Iraq Inquiry, was damning in his verdict on the invasion.

“We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options of disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort,” he said on Wednesday.

“We have also concluded that the judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD were presented with a certainty that was not justified.

“Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated and the planning for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.”