Chilcot: Dudley North MP Ian Austin hits back at 'bully' label after telling Jeremy Corbyn to sit down and shut up

Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North, heckled Jeremy Corbyn as he set out his response to the long-awaited Chilcot report, telling him to 'sit down and shut up.'

His defiance of his party's leader was met with fury among Corbyn's supporters and a petition has been launched online calling for the 'strongest possible action' against Mr Austin.

The petition, which claims Mr Austin acted "like a schoolyard bully" and showed disrespect to those who died in the conflict, has so far been signed by more than 9,000 people.

But the Dudley North MP continued to defend Tony Blair yesterday and criticised Mr Corbyn in an article written for The Times.

He said: "The Chilcot Report will never settle arguments about whether the war was right or wrong, but it should lay to rest allegations about bad faith, lies or deceit.

"First, it finds that there was no falsification or misuse of intelligence by Tony Blair or No.10 at the time. Second, there was no attempt to deceive cabinet ministers. And third, there was no secret pact with the US to go to war.

"That means there is no justification for saying evidence was 'confected', that the case for war a 'deception' or that MPs were 'misled' ahead of the 2003 vote on military action, yet these are exactly the terms used by Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons yesterday."

Of the petition and reaction to his comments in the House of Commons, Austin added: "You get lots of unpleasant abuse on the internet but you just have to put up with it.

"There's an anonymous petition too, but I'm more interested in what people in Dudley say. Of course we must ensure the mistakes made in Iraq are never repeated but the majority of people in Dudley tell me they do not agree with Jeremy Corbyn."

The Chilcot report, which was published on Wednesday, provided a scathing verdict on Government ministers planning, justification and conduct of a military intervention that saw 179 Britons killed.

It said that the UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted, while judgments over Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction were 'presented with a certainty that was not justified'.

It also criticised then Prime Minister Tony Blair's role in Britain's Iraq policy, which it says was based on 'flawed intelligence and assessments' that 'were not challenged'.

Giving his reaction, Mr Corbyn apologised on behalf of the Labour party for its role in the 2003 Iraq war.

But Mr Austin was heavily critical of the Labour leader in his article.

He added: "The facts make no difference at all because he is implacably opposed to the UK or other western countries ever taking military action. He has never supported Western military intervention in all his political life."