In 1997, Tony Blair began his first term as prime minister of the UK. Blair enjoyed a good relationship with U.S. president George W. Bush and allied the UK with the U.S. in the “war against terrorism.” History could judge his premiership kindly in the future, but at the time he stepped down, Blair was viewed as a lucky politician with exceptional talents that enabled him to be successful.
Profile
Tony Blair (born May 6, 1953, Edinburgh, Scot.) British Labour Party leader who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007). He was the youngest prime minister since 1812 and the longest-serving Labour prime minister, and his 10-year tenure as prime minister was the second longest continuous period (after Margaret Thatcher's) in more than 150 years.
Early life and start in politics
The son of a barrister, Blair attended Fettes College in Edinburgh (a school often viewed as Scotland's Eton'') and St. John's College of the University of Oxford, where he combined the study of law with interest in religious ideas and popular music. But he displayed little enthusiasm for politics until he met his future wife, Cherie Booth. He graduated from Oxford in 1975 and was called to the bar the following year. While specializing in employment and commercial law, he became increasingly involved in Labour Party politics and in 1983 was elected to the House of Commons to the safe Labour parliamentary seat of Sedgefield, a tight-knit former mining district in northeastern England. His entry into politics coincided with a long political ascendancy of the Conservative Party (from 1979) and Labour's loss of four consecutive general elections (from 1979 through 1992).
Entering Labour's shadow cabinet in 1988, Blair became the most outspoken of those party leaders calling for Labour to move to the political centre and deemphasize its traditional advocacy of state control and public ownership of certain sectors of the economy. In 1992 John Smith was elected Labour leader, and he appointed Blair shadow home secretary. When Smith died suddenly in May 1994, Blair seized the opportunity, and in July he was elected party leader with 57 percent support. His election came as something of a surprise because many believed the post would go to Gordon Brown, the shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, who had partnered with Blair in an attempt to move Labour to the political centre; however, Blair's stock within the party had risen, and Brown had reluctantly agreed to step aside, though not before the two had come to an understanding that Blair would back Brown as his eventual successor. By mid-1995 Blair had revamped the Labour Party's platform. He abandoned the party's stated commitment to the nationalization of the economy (by waging a successful battle to have the party modify its constitution's Clause IV, which committed the party to “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange”), reduced links with trade unions, and obtained unprecedented commitments to free enterprise, anti-inflationary policies, aggressive crime prevention, and support for Britain's integration into the European Union. Blair summed up his reforms—often opposed by members of his own party—by describing the party as New Labour. Under his leadership, the Labour Party heavily defeated the Conservatives in nationwide municipal elections held in May 1995 and won a landslide victory over the Conservatives in the general election of May 1997, having waged a campaign that centred on the promise that “things can only get better.”
Prime Ministership
First term
Blair enjoyed a 179-seat majority in the House of Commons—the biggest parliamentary majority in the history of the Labour Party and the largest majority of any party since 1935. Inspired by sociologist Anthony Giddens, he described his philosophy of government as the “Third Way.” Blair claimed that his policies were designed to enable social democracy to respond to the challenges of the worldwide market economy and to equip citizens to cope with what Giddens called “the major revolutions of our time,” including globalization. Perhaps the most coherent view about Blair's search for the Third Way was that it was an endeavour to discover a form of progressive politics distinguishing itself from the conservatism of both left and right. Blair frequently looked for advice from businessmen who had come to prominence earlier, under the Conservative prime minister Thatcher. Private firms were given an important role in financing state infrastructure projects, despite widespread criticism that this financing was on terms often disadvantageous to the taxpayer.
Blair gave control of the economic agenda to Gordon Brown, his chancellor of the Exchequer and eventual successor. The Blair government's first major initiative—and perhaps its boldest—granted the Bank of England the power to determine interest rates without government consultation, a policy that had not appeared in the party's platform. The government also immediately signed the Maastricht Treaty's Social Chapter and turned its attention to brokering a peace agreement between republicans and unionists in Northern Ireland. Blair initiated reforms in the House of Commons, modernizing the format of “Prime Minister's Question Time,” during which the prime minister answers questions from members of Parliament. During his first year in office, he organized referenda that created devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales and developed a joint committee to coordinate constitutional and other policies with the opposition Liberal Democrats.
Blair also gave important powers to unelected advisers, notably media consultant Alistair Campbell. The marketing image they adopted, known as “Cool Britannia,” suggested that Britain was a dynamic and successful country that had reinvented itself after years of decline and internal division. New Labour eagerly sought the approval of the mass-circulation press, particularly conservative tabloids such as The Sun, by embracing celebrity culture as well as respect for traditions, including the monarchy.
In May 1998 Blair led a successful referendum campaign to create a new assembly for London and to establish the city's first directly elected mayor. That year Blair also helped to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), which was ratified overwhelmingly in both Ireland and Northern Ireland and which created an elected devolved power-sharing assembly in Northern Ireland for the first time since 1972. Blair also eliminated all but 92 of the hereditary members of the House of Lords as the prelude to more-extensive reforms of that chamber.
The population began to grow skeptical of Blair as a new election approached, as it became clear that his government remained highly centralized and that he had no plans for overdue reforms in the public services. Opinion polls found that there was public concern regarding financial misbehaviour in government, manipulation of the media, the granting of honours to individuals who contributed to Labour Party funds, nepotism, and other actions that put the interests of business before ordinary citizens.
Second term
Facing a deeply unpopular opposition, however, Blair was easily reelected in May 2001 to a 167-seat majority in the House of Commons—the largest-ever second-term majority in British electoral history, though voter turnout was the lowest since 1918. His second term was dominated by international affairs. In the late 1990s he had won praise by mounting peacekeeping operations in the Serbian province of Kosovo and in Sierra Leone. After the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Britain played a key role in forming an international coalition that succeeded in driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, which had been allowed to become a safe haven for Islamic militants such as Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks. Blair enjoyed a good relationship with U.S. Pres. George W. Bush and allied the United Kingdom with the United States in a global “war against terrorism.” In early 2003, following passage by the United Nations Security Council of a resolution mandating the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, Blair and Bush tried without success to persuade other Security Council members that continued weapons inspections would not succeed in uncovering any weapons of mass destruction held by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.
Despite deep divisions within the Labour Party—several ministers resigned and 139 Labour members of Parliament voted in favour of a motion opposing the government's policy—and strong public opposition to a war with Iraq, Blair, with Bush, led a coalition of military forces in an attack on Iraq in March 2003. Blair's enthusiastic support for the action damaged his reputation as a global statesman, and he fell out with key European allies. When military inspectors failed to uncover weapons of mass destruction, the Blair government was accused of distorting (“sexing up”) intelligence on which it had based its claim that Iraq was an imminent threat. In October 2004 Blair announced that he would seek a third term as prime minister but would not stand for a fourth term.
Third term
Despite lingering public dissatisfaction with Blair's policy in Iraq, Blair led the Labour Party to its third successive general election victory in May 2005, albeit with a sharply reduced majority. Simmering revolt in the Labour Party over both Iraq and Blair's rejection of core Labour policies led him to promise that he would resign before the next election. Blair's popularity, with both the general public and the Labour members of Parliament, generally declined after the election. Many people in Britain felt that the country was in the grip of a serious malaise. Social cohesion seemed to be collapsing in much of urban Britain, as shown by a steep rise in violent crime and open drug dealing. Public officials in the police, civil service, and education sectors seemed to be unable to grapple effectively with the social crisis as they struggled to meet bureaucratic targets. After Islamic extremists exploded bombs in London on July 7, 2005, killing 54 people, Blair began to emphasize the need for a common public culture, and former multicultural policies that encouraged ethnic groups to separate into different communities were repudiated.
Blair's government suffered its first defeat in the House of Commons in November 2005, when 49 Labour members of Parliament joined the opposition in voting against antiterrorist laws that would have extended the length of time suspects could be held without charge. Subsequently, many Labour members of Parliament called for Blair to announce a date for his departure as prime minister well before the next general election; following a series of resignations by junior ministers, Blair declared in September 2006 that he would stand down as prime minister within a year. On May 10, 2007—one week after Labour was defeated by the Scottish National Party in elections to the Scottish Parliament and suffered major defeats in English local elections as well and two days after devolved power was returned from London to a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland—Blair announced that he would officially tender his resignation as prime minister on June 27, 2007. Blair subsequently was succeeded as leader of the Labour Party and as prime minister by his long-serving chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.
Assessment
Blair's decade in office was marked by uninterrupted economic growth and a more independent Bank of England. Blair also preserved much of Thatcher's market radicalism while managing to place greater emphasis on social justice. Numerous minority groups found his government more sympathetic to their concerns—notably gays, who by 2004 were allowed to enter into civil partnerships recognized by the law. Many believed, however, that Blair's role in restoring peace to Northern Ireland would come to be seen as his most enduring political legacy. Blair showed a remarkable ability to convey optimism and energy in the face of adversity caused not least by the failure in Iraq.
Critics of his record argued that, instead of using his parliamentary majority to reform the institutions of state, he pursued incoherent short-term policies that left Britain ill-governed in important areas. The state became more intrusive and even more authoritarian without managing to overcome a range of social ills, particularly rising crime and drug use. The economy grew steadily, but it was burdened by low productivity and growing volumes of personal and state debt. Citizens were heavily taxed, and Britain lost much of its remaining manufacturing base, becoming more dependent on financial services and low-skilled sectors for progress. Blair allowed millions of mainly low-skilled migrant workers to settle in the country, and he was criticized for leaving the economy more exposed to the forces of globalization than that of any other large Western country. The biggest cloud hanging over his reputation was the failure to ensure that British involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted in policies capable of preventing that country from becoming a source of instability in the Middle East. History could judge his premiership more kindly in the future. However, at the time that he stepped down, Blair was widely viewed as a lucky politician with exceptional talents that enabled him to be a successful vote winner but ultimately lacking the ability to be a noteworthy reformer at home or a stabilizing force in a world facing the resurgence of dangerous divisions.
Life after the premiership
Nonetheless, after 10 years in office but still only in his early 50s, Blair was not ready to retire from the world scene. On the day of his resignation, he was selected by the “Quartet”—the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations—to serve as special envoy to the Middle East, and he announced he would resign his seat in the House of Commons.
Blair made headlines in December 2007 when he converted to Roman Catholicism (Britain has never had a Roman Catholic prime minister). Before his conversion, he had publicly maintained silence on matters of personal faith, but by 2008 he had demonstrated a deep commitment to initiatives aimed at fostering interfaith cooperation globally.
In 2010 Blair published his memoir, A Journey, in which he reasserts his support for the Iraq War and describes his strained relationship with Gordon Brown.
From : www.biography.com
