Labour MPs have said the Chilcot report should be an opportunity for the party to begin healing its wounds over the Iraq war, but suggest the prospect of an end to divisions is relatively unlikely.
Splits over Tony Blair’s decision to commit British troops to the 2003 invasion remain a major fault line in the party. Some Labour figures are considering a call for Blair to be impeached if the long-delayed report by Sir John Chilcot, to be published on Wednesday, criticises him over the buildup to the war.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, speaking on Sunday, did not dispute the contention that he and the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, would “crucify” Blair as a presumed war criminal. The former SNP leader, Alex Salmond, has speculated that moves by Labour MPs to remove Corbyn were partly motivated by seeking to limit such criticism of Blair.
Corbyn will see the report for the first time at 8am on Wednesday, a few hours before he responds to David Cameron’s statement on Chilcot in the Commons. It is possible Corbyn could apologise for the war on behalf of Labour, something he said he would do before becoming the party leader.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, said on Tuesday that Blair “knowingly lied” before the Iraq war, creating a failed state that was a cause of regional instability.
Some backbench Labour MPs who have focused on Iraq say Chilcot is a time for the party to consign the dispute to the past.
Fabian Hamilton, the Leeds North East MP, who voted in the Commons against military action in 2003, said it was time “to move on and say, God forbid that should ever happen again”.
“It is 13 years ago now, and it’s about time we got beyond this,” he said. “I understand why some colleagues and friends are obsessed. It was the most traumatic and appalling event, and I voted against it.
“But, we have to accept that this was not a conspiracy. Tony Blair did this because he believed it was the right thing to do, even though I believed it to be utterly misguided, as I told him at the time.”
Further argument seemed futile, Hamilton said: “I wonder what it achieves. It doesn’t bring back the people who were killed by military action, or killed by suicide bombings since then. The only solution is a political solution, and the rebuilding of Iraq into a democratic, competent state.”
Mike Gapes, the Ilford South MP who backed the war in 2003 and still thinks it was justified, said he also hoped for a line to be drawn under the issue, but found it hard to be optimistic.
“I’m not,” he said. “I can’t predict what the report says. I suspect that if the report doesn’t come out in accusing some people of being war criminals and saying they should go to The Hague, some people will have already written their headlines, and they’ll say it’s a whitewash, a cover-up, I’m afraid. The passions are so high on this issue, people will still hold to their prejudices, whatever Chilcot says, unfortunately.”
Dave Anderson, the Labour MP for Blaydon, marched against the war as a trade union official in 2003, but says he feels more conflicted now, especially after travelling to the now-autonomous Kurdish part of Iraq.
“I’ve never actually said I agree with us doing it,” he said. “But I wish for the sake of the people who are now my lifelong comrades in Kurdistan that we had done it 15 years before. That’s not the same as saying I support what we did in 2003, although what they did in 2003 relieved those people from the fear of Saddam coming back for them.”
Anderson said he also had little faith that his fellow Labour MPs would accept Chilcot’s findings. “I hope so, but I can’t imagine it,” he said. “There’s so much toxicity. The truth is that people’s minds are so massively made up. If Chilcot falls short of calling Tony Blair a war criminal some people will say it’s a whitewash. I will take it on face value.
“For some people, whichever way it comes down they’re never going to agree it – the die has been cast for a decade, at least, on either side.”
In a statement before the report’s publication, Farron said the lack of post-conflict planning led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis becoming refugees, while a “generation of young people have grown up without a hope for the future”.
He added: “Blair knowingly lied to the public to justify this war, and his actions have damaged public trust, damaged the UK’s standing in the world and crippled the ability of the UK to make humanitarian interventions. It is time he accepts responsibility and acknowledged his catastrophic mistake.”
