Peter Hain MP: Allowing IS to retreat across an invisible border is no solution

Peter Hain MP, a former anti-apartheid campaigner and Labour politician who supported the 2003 invasion has warned that allowing IS "to retreat across an invisible border” is not a solution and said there needed to be a proper peace process in Syria.

With regards to his support of the 2003 invasion, he said he "backed Tony Blair over Iraq because I honestly believed Saddam had WMD. He didn’t, I was wrong."

He said the mistakes of 2003 had made him "deeply allergic" to action in the region and also said that the airstrikes on Libya in 2011 were “hardly a good advertisement for us with chaos in the country.”

He said that had the UK parliament voted to arm Syrian rebels last year it could have had negative consequences.

“Had the prime minister got his way last August where might those British arms have ended up? Probably with ISIL," he said.

He said it was also crucial to address the "bitter and violently corrosive shia-sunni faultline in the region."