Labour MPs turn out in force to defeat Alex Salmond’s motion, accusing him of attempt to ‘pillory and scapegoat one individual’

Labour MPs turned out in force on Wednesday to help defeat a parliamentary motion calling for Tony Blair to be held to account for allegedly misleading parliament over the Iraq war by 439 votes to 70, after a sometimes angry debate.

MPs debate motion accusing Blair of 'misleading' them over Iraq - Politics live Read more

The motion, tabled by the Scottish National party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Alex Salmond, was backed by MPs from six other parties, and called for parliamentary committees to investigate and take appropriate action against the former prime minister.

It said the Chilcot inquiry “provided substantial evidence of misleading information being presented by the then prime minister and others on the development of the then government’s policy towards the invasion of Iraq”.

In his opening speech in the opposition day debate, which was peppered with angry heckles from the Labour benches, Salmond said Blair should be held to account for what was “very much a personal campaign, unbeknownst to cabinet and indeed to parliament”, citing the memo sent to the then US president, George W Bush, from the prime minister saying: “I will be with you whatever.”

“What Iraq demonstrates is that currently at least there are no effective checks and balances in our system,” Salmond said. “The prime minister had the ability to create the circumstances in which this house followed him into an illegal conflict.”

Labour’s stance on the motion caused a row at Monday’s meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, with MPs indicating they would like to see the leadership impose a three-line whip in opposition to it, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s longstanding criticisms of Blair’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

The shadow cabinet instead imposed a weaker, one-line whip. Corbyn himself did not to take part in the debate, instead attending what a spokeswoman said was a “longstanding engagement” in his constituency. Several of his key allies, including Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, were also absent.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Salmond told MPs: ‘What Iraq demonstrates is that … there are no effective checks and balances in our system.’ Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Salmond said: “The leader of the Labour party, if he were free to do so, would be joining us in the lobbies.

“I’m not really interested in the civil war in the Labour party. I’m interested in the real war that took place and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people.”

Many Labour MPs who spoke in the debate said they had opposed the war but also opposed attempts to personalise the blame. Fabian Hamilton, the shadow minister of state for Europe, said he had heard nothing new in the motion that expanded on the arguments made in the Chilcot report.

“Nor will any of us benefit if we continue to try and turn a collective institutional and international failure in Iraq into an attempt to pillory and scapegoat one individual,” he said. “I voted against our government because I thought our prime minister was simply wrong. But never for one second did I believe he was acting in bad faith and I do not do so now.”

The Labour MP Joan Ryan said: “On my reading of Chilcot, it says there was no falsification or improper use of intelligence, there was no misleading of cabinet and no secret commitment to war. Sadly, I think the only deception is in this motion and its opportunistic nature does not serve this issue or this parliament well.”

However, the debate at times emphasised the long shadow cast over Labour by the aftermath of the conflict. There was a tetchy exchange between Labour backbencher Ian Austin and the former shadow Welsh secretary Paul Flynn, who said MPs had been “bribed, bullied, bamboozled” into backing military action.

Austin intervened to ask the deputy speaker if Flynn could produce evidence for his assertion, saying: “What a disgrace.”

Flynn then clarified that he had only intended to suggest “political bribes” had been dangled before wavering backbenchers.

“I am not suggesting that anyone took any money,” he said. “There are such things as political bribes, with inducements and offers, of which we are well aware in this place. There was a very heavy operation here to convince members to vote for war.”

Flynn was one of only a handful of Labour MPs, including Dennis Skinner and Kelvin Hopkins, who defied the Labour whip to vote in favour of the motion.

Senior backbenchers, including former ministers Ed Miliband, Margaret Beckett and Hilary Benn, turned out to join the Conservatives and vote down the motion.

Corbyn’s critics said the SNP motion was a deliberate attempt to exploit divisions in the party over the issue, and he should have taken a stronger line against it, notwithstanding his own stance over the Iraq war. “There’s a sense of exasperation that there was massive opportunism being taken by the SNP and the Greens, and there wasn’t an appetite to call that out,” said the Nottingham East MP, Chris Leslie.

Replying to the motion for the government, the Cabinet Office minister Chris Skidmore said there had been a “long and exhaustive inquiry” by Chilcot into the matters being raised. “Lessons have been learned and will continue to be learned. Therefore the government can see no merit in undertaking any further inquiries into the Iraq war,” he said.

The Conservative MP Ken Clarke said the debate should not centre on one individual. “If we turn these post-Chilcot debates just into attempts to pursue and hound Tony Blair, the whole thing just turns into a party political argument with Labour members of parliament trying to defend the position of their government,” he said.

“Personalising it, if we are not careful, rather loses the point: are we satisfied everything possible is being done to ensure it cannot happen again?”

Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green party, had earlier urged the Labour leadership to vote in favour of the motion. “Top figures in the Labour party like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell fought long and hard against the Iraq war, and have called for those who led us into the disastrous conflict to be held to account,” she said.