Blair’s fury at ‘war criminal’ remark

TONY BLAIR last night launched a savage attack on Jeremy Corbyn for branding him a ‘war criminal’.

The ex-prime minister accused the Labour leader of ‘doing nothing’ but standing by as Syrians are slaughtered.

In his strongest criticism yet of Mr Corbyn, Mr Blair accused the veteran politician of focusing on the ‘politics of protest’ at the expense of the ‘politics of power’.

And he complained that he had become a figure of ‘hate’ because he had taken the difficult decision to send soldiers to war.

His attack came as tension builds ahead of the publication of the Chilcot report into the Iraq War next month.

‘I’m accused of being a war criminal for removing Saddam Hussein – who, by the way, was a war criminal… and yet Jeremy is seen as a progressive icon as we stand by and watch the people of Syria barrel-bombed, beaten and starved into submission and do nothing,’ Mr Blair told Bloomberg Television yesterday.

He said there were two kinds of politics: ‘There’s a guy whose face is on the placard. You’re the person taking difficult decisions. Jeremy is the guy with the placard holding it. One’s the politics of power and the other’s the politics of protest.’ Mr Corbyn’s spokesman said: ‘If Tony Blair is suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn is leading a politics of protest, that’s not correct.’

Last year, Mr Corbyn said the former prime minister could be made to stand trial for war crimes. On BBC Newsnight he said that he thought the Iraq War was an illegal one and that Mr Blair ‘has to explain that’.