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.
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.”