Labour MP Emily Thornberry said her Islington colleague Jeremy Corbyn spoke for the “vast majority of the Labour Party” when he apologised for the Iraq War in the wake of the scathing Chilcot Inquiry report.

She said this week that foreign policies often threw up more disagreements in the party than domestic ones, but that Mr Corbyn, Labour’s leader, had spoken “genuinely” when he said sorry for the intervention in 2003.

But Ms Thornberry added that it was not the time to make personal attacks on the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, which Mr Corbyn has conspicuously avoided.

She said: “We have to be very careful not to get into traditional scapegoat mode. We can’t focus everything on Tony Blair and say he’s gone now, he takes our guilt. The lessons are so much wider than that, and they apply today.

“We have decisions to make on Libya and Syria, and they should be informed by Chilcot.”

She added: “The failures [with Iraq] were a collective failure. We are a coalition on the left and there will always be some dissenting voices but when Jeremy apologised he did so on behalf of the vast majority of the party.”

Mr Blair said this week he had acted in good faith when he took the decision to go to war.

• Keywords
  SOCIALISM, WAR, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
• Persons keyword
  , Emily Thornberry, Jeremy Corbyn