Tony Blair

Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997, held shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994, and was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history after Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office and the only person to lead Labour to three consecutive general election victories. Blair founded the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in 2016 and serves as its Executive Chairman. Blair attended the independent school Fettes College, studied law at St John's College, Oxford, and worked as a barrister. He became involved in the Labour Party and was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 for Sedgefield. Blair supported moving Labour to the political centre of British politics. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet in 1988 and as shadow home secretary by John Smith in 1992. Following Smith's death in 1994, Blair won the Labour leadership election, and went on to rebrand the party as "New Labour". He became the youngest prime minister of the 20th century after Labour won a landslide of 418 seats in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years in opposition. It was the first Labour victory for 23 years. During his first term, Blair enacted constitutional reforms and increased public spending on healthcare and education, while introducing market-based reforms in these areas. He introduced a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, devolution in Scotland and Wales, expansion of LGBTQ rights and significant progress in the Northern Ireland peace process with the landmark Good Friday Agreement. He oversaw interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000, which were successful. Blair secured a second term with another landslide victory in 2001. These years in office were shaped by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, resulting in the war on terror. Blair supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and had British Forces participate in the Iraq War, on the false beliefs that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction and had developed ties with al-Qaeda. The invasion was controversial; it attracted widespread opposition and 139 of Blair's MPs opposed it. As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament and his popularity dropped. He won a third term in the 2005 general election, but with a reduced majority. He pushed for more public sector reform and brokered an agreement to restore powersharing in Northern Ireland. Amid the Cash-for-Honours scandal, Blair was interviewed as a witness and not under caution. In 2006, Blair announced he would resign within a year. He resigned as party leader and as prime minister in June 2007, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown, his chancellor; on the day he ceased to be prime minister, he gave up his parliamentary seat. Blair was immediately appointed special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a post that he held until 2015. He has been chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016, has made political interventions, and has been an influence on Keir Starmer. In 2009, Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. Blair has been among the most popular and unpopular politicians in British history; as prime minister, he achieved the highest recorded approval ratings in his first term but one of the lowest after the Iraq War. The 2016 Iraq Inquiry report gave a damning assessment of Blair's role in the Iraq War. Blair is rated as above average in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers.