London- Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lies about weapons of mass destruction, and his secret war pact with former U.S. President George W. Bush will be exposed by the Chilcot Inquiry, Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said.
His remarks were given on Tuesday in a speech, which was attended by Asharq Al-Awsat, at the London School of Economics, to honor the late Ralph Miliband, a Marxist scholar and father of Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Miliband.
“The Chilcot report will come out in a few weeks, and it will tell us what we need to know, what I think we already know: There were no weapon of mass destruction, there was no ability to attack within 45 minutes and a deal had been made with Bush in advance.”
Sir John Chilcot is due to finally release his long-delayed report on the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion on July 6, seven years after the inquiry was commissioned.
While Corbyn supported some of the domestic achievements of Blair’s “New Labor,” he argued it had stuck too closely to its neoliberal, Thatcherite ideological roots.
For his part, Corbyn took a leading role in opposing the 2003 invasion both inside and outside parliament.
Asked if Blair should be tried for war crimes, Corbyn said: “If he’s committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who’s committed a war crime should be.”
“I think it was an illegal war, I’m confident about that, indeed former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan confirmed it was an illegal war, and therefore Blair has to explain to that.”
“Is he going to be tried for it, I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly,” Corbyn added.
It is worth mentioning that some MPs are trying to revive a campaign to have Blair prosecuted for his part in the war, either at an international tribunal or by a special parliamentary impeachment process.
Corbyn was quoted as saying: “former labor party leaders made mistakes by trying to lower the promises threshold in order to achieve more than expected.”
He pointed out that the modesty and simplicity of the latest government’s statement in the elections might boost what is usually said, “Politics cannot make things better.”
Regarding the general elections that are scheduled to be held in 2020, Labor Party leader warned that “no matter how many” isolated campaigns were successful, the party would need to win a majority in parliament to do its job properly.
“It’s been said the Labor movement improves people’s lives when we win elections: that’s absolutely true, we have to win elections, we have to fight as hard as we can,” he said.
“No matter how many campaigning we win, and we have won a few, and I hope we’ll win quite a few more as time goes on, the reality is we don’t have a majority in Parliament, we don’t have a Labor government.