It was a Labour Prime Minister and a Labour Government that took us into the Iraq war, and trying to dismiss Blair as a Labour PM or that Labour Government majority back then is pathetic! Iraq is just as much a legacy of the last Labour Government as the dire economic legacy they left the country.
Said it at the time on this site, and I will say it again. There was an unspoken rule that what ever spin a UK Government puts on its policies or record, the one thing you don't ever do is mislead the country or the HoC's when it comes to the reason for taking the nation to war. Its not expenses etc which destroyed the voters trust in our politicians, its the last Labour Governments behaviour over Iraq. And the Conservatives were on the Opposition benches, and very much reliant on the Government to be honest with them as was the rest of the country at the time!
But more important than that, it wasn't the Conservatives on the Opposition benches who took the decisions that led to catastrophic mistakes being made in the first days and weeks in Iraq after the invasion. That responsibility lies solely with Bush in the White House, and Blair and his collective Labour Government Cabinet in No10. Bush senior and John Major didn't make the same mistakes back in the first Iraq war. Both Afghanistan and Iraq might be in a different place right now if Bush and Blair had made the right decisions when they initially went into both these countries. But they didn't, and we are where we are now because of that, and a lot of British soldiers died long after each of these interventions as a result.
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Most of the public do not think Blair as Labour. I certainly don't. I rejoined the Party after the war criminal left office !
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/15/francis-matthews
But more important than that, it wasn't the Conservatives on the Opposition benches who took the decisions that led to catastrophic mistakes being made in the first days and weeks in Iraq after the invasion. That responsibility lies solely with Bush in the White House, and Blair and his collective Labour Government Cabinet in No10. Bush senior and John Major didn't make the same mistakes back in the first Iraq war. Both Afghanistan and Iraq might be in a different place right now if Bush and Blair had made the right decisions when they initially went into both these countries. But they didn't, and we are where we are now because of that, and a lot of British soldiers died long after each of these interventions as a result.