• [112] Leading Conservatives of the post-New Labour era hold Blair in high regard: George Osborne describes him as “the master”, Michael Gove thought he had an “entitlement
  to conservative respect” in February 2003, while David Cameron reportedly maintained Blair as an informal adviser.

• [99] On 7 September 2006, Blair publicly stated he would step down as party leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference held 10–13 September 2007,[100]
  having promised to serve a full term during the previous general election campaign.

• [106] Blair rarely applies such labels to himself, but he promised before the 1997 election that New Labour would govern “from the radical centre”, and according to one lifelong
  Labour Party member, has always described himself as a social democrat.

• Calling on the slogan “One member, one vote”, John Smith (with limited input from Blair) secured an end to the trade union block vote for Westminster candidate selection at
  the 1993 conference.

• [citation needed] Despite his defeat, William Russell, political correspondent for The Glasgow Herald, described Blair as “a very good candidate”, while acknowledging that
  the result was “a disaster” for the Labour Party.

• As a combined result of the Blair–Brown pact, Iraq war and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour Party for Blair to resign.

• [29] In contrast to his later centrism, Blair made it clear in a letter he wrote to Labour leader Michael Foot in July 1982 (published in 2006) that he had “come to Socialism
  through Marxism” and considered himself on the left.

• Some left-wing critics, such as Mike Marqusee in 2001, argued that Blair oversaw the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to the right.

• Blair was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 2005, in part thanks to the UK’s strong economic performance, but with a substantially reduced majority, in
  part thanks to the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War.

• [73] Journalist Andrew Marr has argued that the success of ground attacks, real and threatened, over air strikes alone was influential on how Blair planned the Iraq War, and
  that the success of the first three wars Blair fought “played to his sense of himself as a moral war leader”.

• [45] Leader of the Opposition See also: Shadow Cabinet of Tony Blair John Smith died suddenly in 1994 of a heart attack.

• [60] Blair was forced to back down on these proposals because John Prescott and Gordon Brown opposed the PR system, and many members of the Shadow Cabinet were worried about
  concessions being made towards the Lib Dems.

• [53] However, the move away from nationalisation in the old Clause IV made many on the left-wing of the Labour Party feel that Labour was moving away from traditional socialist
  principles of nationalisation set out in 1918, and was seen by them as part of a shift of the party towards “New Labour”.

• Following the death of Smith in 1994, Blair won the 1994 Labour Party leadership election to succeed him.

• [56] Aided by the unpopularity of John Major’s Conservative government (itself deeply divided over the European Union),[57] “New Labour” won a landslide victory at the 1997
  general election, ending eighteen years of Conservative Party rule, with the heaviest Conservative defeat since 1906.

• In May 1985, he appeared on BBC’s Question Time, arguing that the Conservative Government’s Public Order White Paper was a threat to civil liberties.

• Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: In office, 2 May 1997 – 27 June 2007; Monarch: Elizabeth II; Deputy: John Prescott; Preceded by: John Major; Succeeded by: Gordon Brown;
  Leader of the Opposition: In office 21 July 1994 – 2 May 1997; Monarch: Elizabeth II; Prime Minister: John Major; Deputy: John Prescott; Preceded by: Margaret Beckett; Succeeded by: John Major; Leader of the Labour Party: In office, 21 July
  1994 – 24 June 2007; Deputy: John Prescott; Chair: Charles Clarke, John Reid, Ian McCartney, Hazel Blears; Preceded by: John Smith; Succeeded by: Gordon Brown; Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East; In office, 27 June 2007 – 27 May
  2015; Preceded by: James Wolfensohn; Succeeded by: Kito de Boer; Member of Parliament for Sedgefield; In office, 9 June 1983 – 27 June 2007; Preceded by: Constituency established[a]; Succeeded by: Phil Wilson; Personal details: Born: Anthony
  Charles Lynton Blair, 6 May 1953 (age 69), Edinburgh, Scotland; Political party: Labour; Spouse: Cherie Booth, (m. 1980); Children: 4, including Euan; Parent: Leo Blair (father); Relatives: Sir William Blair (brother); Education: Chorister
  School, Fettes College; Alma mater: St John’s College, Oxford (BA), Inns of Court School of Law Early years Blair was born at Queen Mary Maternity Home in Edinburgh, Scotland,[1] on 6 May 1953.

• By this time, Blair was aligned with the reforming tendencies in the party (headed by leader Neil Kinnock) and was promoted after the 1987 election to the Shadow Trade and
  Industry team as spokesman on the City of London.

• [90][91] He was the first UK prime minister to have been formally questioned by police, though not under caution, while still in office.

• Blair decided not to issue a list of Resignation Honours, making him the first prime minister of the modern era not to do so.

• [54] He inherited the Labour leadership at a time when the party was ascendant over the Conservatives in the opinion polls, since the Conservative government’s reputation
  in monetary policy was left in tatters by the Black Wednesday economic disaster of September 1992.

• [34] John Burton became Blair’s election agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies.

• [36] He called for Britain to leave the EEC[37] as early as the 1970s,[38] though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing membership[citation
  needed] and voted “Yes” in the 1975 referendum on the subject.

• The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto published in 1996 and titled New Labour, New Life for Britain, presented
  as the brand of a newly reformed party.

• [74] When asked in 2010 if the success of Palliser may have “embolden[ed] British politicians” to think of military action as a policy option, General Sir David Richards admitted
  there “might be something in that”.

• [46][50] At a special conference in April 1995, the clause was replaced by a statement that the party is “democratic socialist”,[50][51][52] and Blair also claimed to be a
  “democratic socialist” himself in the same year.

• Blair’s initial inquiries discovered that the left was trying to arrange the selection for Les Huckfield, sitting MP for Nuneaton who was trying elsewhere; several sitting
  MPs displaced by boundary changes were also interested in it.

• Blair resigned from his Sedgefield seat in the House of Commons in the traditional form of accepting the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, to which he was appointed by
  Gordon Brown in one of the latter’s last acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

• [102] At a special party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, Blair formally handed over the leadership of the Labour Party to Gordon Brown, who had been Chancellor of
  the Exchequer in Blair’s three ministries.

• [68] Military intervention and the War on Terror In his first six years in office, Blair ordered British troops into combat five times, more than any other prime minister
  in British history.

• [35] Blair’s election literature in the 1983 general election endorsed left-wing policies that Labour advocated in the early 1980s.

• [60] In the event, virtually every opinion poll since late-1992 put Labour ahead with enough support to form an overall majority.

• Blair’s election as leader saw Labour support surge higher still[55] in spite of the continuing economic recovery and fall in unemployment that the Conservative government
  (led by John Major) had overseen since the end of the 1990–92 recession.

• [58] According to diaries released by Paddy Ashdown, during Smith’s leadership of the Labour Party, there were discussions with Ashdown about forming a coalition government
  if the next general election resulted in a hung parliament.

• [55] At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to office were “education, education, and education”.

• He has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016, and has made occasional political interventions.

• When he discovered the Trimdon branch had not yet made a nomination, Blair visited them and won the support of the branch secretary John Burton, and with Burton’s help was
  nominated by the branch.

• [44] But Blair and the modernisers wanted Smith to go further still, and called for radical adjustment of Party goals by repealing “Clause IV,” the historic commitment to
  nationalisation of industry.

• [43] When Kinnock resigned after a fourth consecutive Conservative victory in the 1992 general election, Blair became shadow home secretary under John Smith.

• [108] A YouGov opinion poll in 2005 found that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, placed Blair on the right of the political spectrum.

• [83] The Chilcot Inquiry report of 2016 gave a damning assessment of Blair’s role in the Iraq War, though the former prime minister again refused to apologise for his decision
  to back the US-led invasion.

• They aspired to middle-class status but accepted the Conservative argument that Labour was holding ambitious people back with its levelling-down policies.

• With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party’s longest-serving prime minister,[64] and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive
  general election victories.

• [26] Early political career Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975.

• [71] Palliser had been intended as an evacuation mission but Brigadier David Richards was able to convince Blair to allow him to expand the role; at the time, Richards’ action
  was not known and Blair was assumed to be behind it.

• [72] Blair and US president George W. Bush shake hands after their press conference in the East Room of the White House, 2004 From the start of the War on Terror in 2001,
  Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of George W. Bush, participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq.

• Blair had been a major advocate for a ground offensive, which Bill Clinton was reluctant to do, and ordered that 50,000 soldiers – most of the available British Army – should
  be made ready for action.

• As a backbencher, Blair supported moving the party to the political centre of British politics.

• His tenure as leader began with a historic rebranding of the party, which began to use the campaign label New Labour.

• [109] The Financial Times on the other hand has argued that Blair is not conservative, but instead a populist.

• The Afghanistan and Iraq wars continued, and in 2006, Blair announced he would resign within a year.

• [30][31] With a general election due, Blair had not been selected as a candidate anywhere.

• Blair had notable electoral successes and reforms, and he is usually rated as above average in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers.

• As prime minister, he achieved the highest recorded approval ratings during his first few years in office, but also one of the lowest such ratings during and after the Iraq
  War.

• [30] Like Tony Benn, Blair believed that the “Labour right” was bankrupt:[31] “Socialism ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people.

• After leaving office, Blair gave up his seat and was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015.

• [65] Northern Ireland Blair addressing a crowd in Armagh, 1998 His contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland peace process by helping to negotiate the Good Friday
  Agreement (after 30 years of conflict) was widely recognised.

• Blair was appointed prime minister after Labour won the 1997 general election, its largest landslide general election victory in history, becoming the youngest prime minister
  of the 20th century.

• [47] Blair meeting with Spanish prime minister Felipe González at Moncloa Palace in 1996 During his speech at the 1994 Labour Party conference, Blair announced a forthcoming
  proposal to update the party’s objects and objectives, which was widely interpreted to relate to replacing Clause IV of the party’s constitution with a new statement of aims and values.

• [111] There is some evidence that Blair’s long term dominance of the centre forced his Conservative opponents to shift a long distance to the left to challenge his hegemony
  there.

• “[80] Blair said that British and American attitude towards Saddam Hussein had “changed dramatically” after the 11 September attacks.

• Blair defeated John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in the subsequent leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition.

• [87][88] His style was sometimes criticised as not that of a prime minister and head of government, which he was, but of a president and head of state – which he was not.

• Aged five, this marked the beginning of a long association Blair was to have with Durham.

• Aged five, this marked the beginning of a long association Blair was to have with Durham.

• Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair KG (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the
  Labour Party from 1994 to 2007.

• In addition, Blair saw the introduction of a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, constitutional reform such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, an extensive
  expansion of LGBT+ rights and significant progress in the Northern Ireland peace process with the passing of the landmark Good Friday Agreement.

• Blair, the leader of the modernising faction, had an entirely different vision, arguing that the long-term trends had to be reversed.

• [28] Although Blair lost the Beaconsfield by-election and Labour’s share of the vote fell by 10 percentage points, he acquired a profile within the party.

• At various points in his premiership, Blair was among both the most popular and most unpopular figures in UK history.

• He is the second longest serving prime minister in modern history after Margaret Thatcher, and is the longest serving Labour politician to have held the office.

• When the legal challenge failed, the party had to rerun all selections on the new boundaries; most were based on existing seats, but unusually in County Durham a new Sedgefield
  constituency had been created out of Labour-voting areas which had no obvious predecessor seat.

 

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