I admire Mr Corbyn for his honesty and integrity - and that position is always going to lay him wide open to the ridicule he has experienced, but he is old enough and experienced enough to know that for himself.
It is to further distance the party from the Tory Liar years.
If the Labour Party apologises for taking us into a disastrous war, but its old Leader doesn't, then there is is a clear separation of the two.
Naomi - "I see no point in this kind of apology. It serves no practical purpose and changes nothing."
You could argue the same about flowers and cards at a funeral - it doesn't change the fact that someone is dead.
But sometimes, people need to make an expression of their feelings, and the criteria of whether or not it changes anything, or makes a tangible difference to events is not the reason why they do it - or equally, a reason why they should not.
It wasnt the Labour Party which invaded Iraq, it was a previous now defunct labour government with the backing of the Tories
So, a pointless gesture. Welcome to the Corbyn era :-)
AOG - "Just apologise for them being dead, that's a new one, but then again isn't that just what Corbyn is doing for the dead of the Iraqi war?"
I'm not sure where you have made the leap to the notion that I believe that flowers and cards are 'an apology' for people being dead - unless I have misunderstood your point.
But no, I don't think Mt Corbyn wants to apologise for people being dead - he wants to apologise for the circumstances of their deaths - a futile un-thought-through unplanned knee-jerk ego-trip war which is what put those people into the situations where they died.
I think that fact that history clearly demonstrates that they clearly died in vain merits an apology from the government of the day - but that is unlikely, so Mr Corbyn is offering what is possible - an apology from the party from which that government was formed.