Tony Blair
Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007, won three general elections, and destroyed his reputation over Iraq. Born in Edinburgh in 1953 and raised in Durham, he was educated at Fettes and read law at Oxford, where he sang in a rock band, and practised as a barrister specialising in employment law. He entered parliament in 1983 for Sedgefield, a safe northern seat, and rose rapidly. After John Smith's sudden death in 1994 he won the leadership and rebranded the party New Labour, persuading it to abolish Clause IV, its commitment to public ownership, in 1995. He won in 1997 with a majority of 179, the largest in the party's history. His government introduced the minimum wage, devolved power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, made the Bank of England independent, passed the Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and increased NHS and school spending substantially, cutting child and pensioner poverty. He was central to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, sustaining the negotiations personally. He intervened militarily five times: Iraq in 1998, Kosovo in 1999, Sierra Leone in 2000, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Sierra Leone and Kosovo are generally judged successes. Iraq was not. He committed British forces on the basis of claims about weapons of mass destruction that proved unfounded, against the largest protest march in British history, and the Chilcot inquiry concluded in 2016 that the legal basis was far from satisfactory and that peaceful options had not been exhausted. He handed over to Gordon Brown in 2007 and became a Middle East envoy.
- Lived: 1953 CE – ?
- Nationality: British
- Roles: UK Prime Minister (1997-2007)
