Blair condemns Corbyn for standing idle as Syrians perish
TONY BLAIR has said he is not a “war criminal” and hit out at Jeremy Corbyn for “standing by” as Syria is “beaten and starved into submission”.
The former prime minister made an extraordinary attack on the Labour leader, whom he accused of representing the “politics of protest”.
He made the intervention amid suggestions Mr Corbyn is preparing to call for Mr Blair to be investigated for war crimes in the wake of the Chilcot report into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War. Mr Blair has refused to say whether he will accept the verdict of the report when it is released in July. The former Labour leader said he will have to wait until reading the full findings before reacting, fuelling speculation he may challenge some of the claims.
Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP and Mr Blair’s former special envoy on human rights in Iraq, warned in the Commons yesterday that the report would be “discredited” if it “fails to recognise that the then prime minister honestly and genuinely believed that his actions, given the information available, were the right thing to do at the time”.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Mr Blair said: “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 peo- ple of Syria barrel-bombed, beaten and starved into submission and do nothing.” He added: “There’s a guy whose face is on the placard. That’s me: Hate that guy. You’re the person in power taking difficult decisions. Jeremy is the guy with the placard, he’s the guy holding it. One’s the politics of power and the other’s the politics of protest.”
Mr Corbyn, a life-long pacifist, faced a rebellion from his shadow cabinet and MPs last year when he opposed British airstrikes in Syria.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn dismissed Mr Blair’s comments and refused to say whether the Labour leader would campaign for an In vote in the EU referendum alongside Mr Blair if approached. They added that it was “not correct” to say that Mr Corbyn was leading a “protest” party and rejected the suggestion he shared any blame for the deaths of Syrians in the civil war.
It is understood that Mr Corbyn will not row back from calls he made last year for Mr Blair to stand trial for war crimes if he is found to have broken the law. Mr Blair’s reputation is expected to be seriously damaged by the inquiry, according to a senior source who has discussed the report with its authors.
Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to scrap Trident is based on “myths, science fiction and gross inaccuracies”, Labour’s backbench defence committee has warned. John Woodcock, its chairman, accused anti-Trident MPs of trying to “muddy the waters” of military expertise.