🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Tony Blair

Prime Ministers · 20th century

Tony Blair

1953– · British

Labour

In office: 1997–2007

Sir Tony Blair rebranded his party as New Labour and won three consecutive general elections, starting with the 1997 landslide. His governments made the Bank of England independent, introduced the minimum wage, created devolved governments in Scotland and Wales and helped secure the Good Friday Agreement. His decision to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq came to dominate his legacy; he stood down in 2007 in favour of Gordon Brown.

How to spot them

  • ▸New Labour and the rewriting of Clause IV
  • ▸'Education, education, education'; 'the People's Princess'
  • ▸The Good Friday Agreement and the Iraq War
  • ▸Born in Edinburgh; Fettes College; sang in the student band Ugly Rumours
  • ▸The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

In office

Rewriting Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution (1995)

Dropped the commitment to common ownership of the means of production

'The People's Princess' tribute to Diana (1997)

His statement on the morning of Diana's death in Paris

The Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement (1998)

Northern Ireland peace settlement, when he spoke of feeling 'the hand of history upon our shoulder'

Independence for the Bank of England (1997)

Operational control of interest rates handed to the Bank days after the election

Devolution: the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly (1999)

Created after referendums in 1997

The invasion of Iraq and the Chilcot Inquiry (2003)

Joined the US-led invasion; the Chilcot report (2016) was highly critical

National minimum wage (1999)

Introduced under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998

Key ideas

  • The 'Third Way' between old-style socialism and free-market conservatism
  • Liberal interventionism: Kosovo (1999) and Sierra Leone (2000)
  • Human Rights Act 1998, Freedom of Information Act 2000, Hunting Act 2004 and civil partnerships (2004)

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Edinburgh in 1953; educated at Fettes College and St John's College, Oxford
  • •At 43 in 1997, the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812
  • •MP for Sedgefield 1983–2007
  • •His son Leo, born in 2000, was the first child born to a serving prime minister in over 150 years
  • •In 2006 he became the first serving prime minister to be questioned by police in a criminal inquiry ('cash for honours'); no charges followed
  • •Converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007
  • •Middle East envoy for the Quartet 2007–2015; made a Knight of the Garter in 2022

Drill it — 8 cards

1 / 8new card

Sources