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British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, April 28, 2004. (AP Photo/John Stillwell)
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INDEPTH: TONY BLAIR
Britain's longest-serving Labour prime minister
CBC News Online | May 11, 2007
Tony Blair traces his political birth to the year 1963 when the political hopes of his father died. Leo Blair suffered a stroke while running for Parliament for the Conservatives. Tony was just 10.
Prime Minister Tony Blair stands with his family, from left, son Nicholas, daughter Kathryn, son Leo, wife Cherie and son Euan, on the doorsteps of 10 Downing
Street, London, June 8, 2001, following his election victory. (AP Photo/PA, Chris Ison)
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"After his illness, my father transferred his ambitions onto his kids," Blair said in a 1994 interview with the Sunday Times Magazine.
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was born May 6, 1953, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Leo and Hazel Blair. His father was a law lecturer and Tony had a comfortable upbringing. He was educated at the elite Fettes College in Edinburgh before heading to Oxford for law school in 1972. At Oxford, Blair was known as an outgoing person who played bass guitar and sang for a rock band called Ugly Rumours.
In a 2003 newspaper interview, band mate Mark Ellen reveals that Blair is a fan of the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger.
"He was fantastically confident without any arrogance or swagger," said Ellen about Blair's performances, in an April 2003 piece in the Observer.
But Blair had another purpose in life. He graduated in 1975 and was called to the bar the following year, specializing in employment and commercial law. At the same time, he became involved with the Labour Party and met his future wife Cherie, a fellow lawyer. They married in 1980. They have four children: Euan, Nicky, Kathryn and Leo, who was born May 20, 2000.
Blair entered politics in 1983, winning a seat for Labour at the age of 30. Within two years, he was beginning to attract attention within the party. He was moving up the ranks from the backbenches to become a major treasury critic. By 1988, he was in the shadow cabinet – appointed shadow secretary of state for energy.
By 1992, Labour had lost four successive elections and was badly adrift. The Conservatives won each of those elections with a majority. Labour was in need of a facelift.
Neil Kinnock resigned the party's leadership after the 1992 drubbing and was replaced by John Smith. He made Tony Blair the party's shadow home secretary.
For the first time in years, the Conservatives under John Major seemed to be vulnerable. Smith had worked to unify Labour's left and right wings and was widely seen as having a good chance to lead the party to victory in the next election.
But Smith died of a heart attack in 1994 and Labour had to choose a new leader. It was Tony Blair. In a landslide.
Blair moved quickly to distance Labour from what many viewed as control by trade unions and left-wing factions. He declared that he got into politics not to be part of a protest movement but to govern. Labour shifted to the centre.
Blair's new Labour caught on with the voters, and in 1997 he led the party to its biggest electoral victory ever. John Major's Conservatives were humbled at the polls. Four years later, another Labour victory. It was the first time Labour had won back-to-back majority governments.
Blair succeeded in claiming the middle ground for Labour. But in 2001, voter turnout tumbled.
Blair's popularity suffered a setback in the years following the election. In September 2002, he unveiled intelligence reports that claimed Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction on 45 minutes' notice. He used them to argue for the overthrow of Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein.
Many in Britain resented his unflagging support of the United States in its decision to invade Iraq. Three cabinet ministers quit over Blair's Iraq policy. Britain sent 45,000 troops to support the American-led invasion.
As in the United States, the Blair government became embroiled in a controversy over whether it had deliberately exaggerated the danger posed by Iraq to boost public support for the war. That was the thrust of a BBC report that an inquiry later ruled unfounded.
But criticism of Britain's Iraq role continued. Blair named a panel to look into the state of the country's pre-war intelligence. In July 2004, the panel cleared Blair and his government of deliberate manipulation of the intelligence. But it found serious flaws in MI-6's intelligence. Blair said he took full responsibility for the mistakes.
Blair called an election in the spring of 2005 and won an unprecedented third majority (albeit with a reduced number of seats). His party won just 36 per cent of the popular vote – a record low for a winning party. Blair had said before the election that he would not lead Labour into a fourth election, but signalled that he wanted to stay around for a full third term.
Blair's response to the July 2005 extremist attacks on London's transit system bolstered public support for his leadership at the time. But several of Blair's attempts to bring in tough anti-terrorist laws were later defeated when many of his own MPs voted against them.
In March 2006, Blair was hit by what became to be known as the "loans for peerages" scandal. It turned out that some rich businesspeople who'd made large, secret loans to the Labour Party ended up in the House of Lords or were given knighthoods or other titles. Scotland Yard was called in to investigate whether illegal inducements had been offered. There were renewed calls for Blair to step down.
Blair denied wrongdoing but the affair damaged him badly. Some observers said it would be difficult for him to hang on to the leadership for long.
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| IN HIS OWN WORDS: |
"I did not join the Labour party to protest. I joined it as a party of government and I will make sure that it is a party of government."
– Tony Blair to the Trade Union Congress, September 1995
"The question is: what do you leave behind? And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty."
– Tony Blair speaking to the U.S. Congress, July 18, 2003
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| BLAIR'S HEALTH: |
In October 2003, Blair received treatment for an irregular heartbeat. He felt ill one day and went to a hospital where he was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia – his heart was beating abnormally fast. He was given a small electric shock to return the heartbeat back to normal and returned home that night. Blair went to work the following day, keeping it low-key.
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