Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. [97] President George W. Bush had preliminary talks with Blair to ask him to take up the envoy role.

They increasingly saw Labour in terms defined by the opposition, regarding higher taxes and higher interest rates. He is a director of buy-to-let property firm Oldbury Residential Ltd, co-owned with his 62-year-old mother. [111] He also introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation. There’s nothing else in the pipeline, no plans to do anything else.’.

Blair described the report as "nonsense". [87], As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament,[88][89] and his popularity dropped dramatically. Calling on the slogan, "One member, one vote" John Smith (with limited input from Blair) secured an end to the trade union block vote for Westminster candidate selection at the 1993 conference. [10][11], In January 2010, when sentencing a defendant, Shamso Miah, for assault, Booth announced that she would suspend his prison sentence after describing him as a "religious man". He became involved in Labour politics and was elected Member of Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983. Polly Toynbee, Michael White and Patrick Wintour, Jeremy Lovell, Britain Set to Miss its Own Greenhouse Gas Target, CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (, foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration, Timeline of the 2007 Labour Party (UK) leadership election, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, Parliamentary motion to impeach Tony Blair (November 2004), "Blair's birthplace is bulldozed in Edinburgh", Blair: 'Why adoption is close to my heart', "We had no file on him but it was clear he was up for the business", "Newcastle fan Tony Blair shock candidate for key Premier League role", "British Prime Ministers and their passion for football", "Tony Blair absolutely modelled himself on Mick Jagger", "Tony Blair recalls 'dire' standup attempts and his role as 'Captain Kink, "Tony Blair reveals he was a student 'Trot' inspired to enter politics by the life of Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky", "Blair reveals he 'toyed with Marxism' after reading book on Trotsky", "British Prime Ministers | University of Oxford", "Family tragedy at the heart of Blair's ambition", "Labour's Old Romantic: A Film Portrait of Michael Foot", "By-election boost for Thatcher's stance", "The full text of Tony Blair's letter to Michael Foot written in July 1982", "Blair's agent suspended over foul-mouthed threat", "America's Friend: Reflections on Tony Blair", "May 2, 1997: Labour win general election by a landslide to end 18 years of Conservative rule", "Blair mooted Lib Dem coalition deal – Ashdown", "Biography: The Prime Minister Tony Charles Lynton Blair", "Tony Blair: 'Labour can win at any point that it wants to get back to winning ways, "1998: Northern Ireland peace deal reached", "Tony Blair admits: I would have invaded Iraq anyway", "Malaysian former PM Mahathir accuses Tony Blair as war criminal", "Pinter demands war crimes trial for Blair", "Iraq inquiry hears defiant Blair say: I'd do it again", "Tony Blair defends UK involvement in Iraq war", "Tony Blair at Iraq inquiry – the key points", "Tony Blair apologises for 'mistakes' over Iraq War and admits 'elements of truth' to view that invasion helped rise of ISIS", "Tony Blair unrepentant as Chilcot gives crushing Iraq war verdict", "Blair agrees to face grilling by select committee critics", "President Blair: Americans love our leader but may cause his downfall", "Blair a casualty of UK support for Iraq war", "Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war", "Blair Risked Much in Support of U.S.-UK Friendship", "Blair resigns as MP and heads for Mideast role", "Tony Blair refuses to produce an honours list", "We're a left-of-centre party pursuing prosperity and social justice", "A decade of Blair has left the Labour party on its knees", "I can't fight my feelings any more: I love Tony", "David Cameron's friendship with Tony Blair is starting to do serious damage", "Tony Blair's legacy: 20% jump in amount of legislation introduced per year", Blair's 'frenzied law making': a new offence for every day spent in office, "Did New Labour spend too much in government? In November 2011, a war crimes tribunal of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, established by Malaysia's former and current Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, reached a unanimous conclusion that Blair and George W. Bush are guilty of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and genocide as a result of their roles in the 2003 Iraq War. [236] The family's primary residence is in Connaught Square; the Blairs own eight residences in total. After university, Euan worked at Morgan Stanley. [54], According to diaries released by Paddy Ashdown, during Smith's leadership of the Labour Party, there were discussions with Ashdown about forming a coalition government if the next general election resulted in a hung parliament. If Parliament can't then it should decide to go back to the people. The couple were driven away from the church in a black taxi cab before an expected reception at the Blair family's Grade I-listed mansion nearby. The CIA-influenced British prime minister in the book is said to be a thinly disguised version of Blair. The court heard that Miah had been to a mosque shortly before he broke a man's jaw following a row in a bank queue.

White House sources stated that "both Israel and the Palestinians had signed up to the proposal". With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister,[59] and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories. In 1982, Blair was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where there was a forthcoming by-election. He resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party in 2007 and was succeeded by Gordon Brown, who had been his Chancellor of the Exchequer since 1997.

Blair stated in 2014 that he was worth "less than £20 million". [264] Blair reportedly indicated that he did not want the traditional knighthood or peerage bestowed on former prime ministers. You cannot do that if you are tainted overmuch with a pragmatic period in power. [132], The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of Britons angry at American influence. "[154], Blair was reported by The Guardian in 2006 to have been supported politically by Rupert Murdoch, the founder of the News Corporation organisation. [38][39] In a letter to the newspaper, Blair denied this characterisation of her mediation efforts, describing their story as "sensationalist and inaccurate". [20][21] He graduated from Oxford at the age of 22 in 1975 with a second-class Honours B.A. [161], The response includes contacts "clearly of an official nature" in the specified period, but excludes contacts "not clearly of an official nature. His wife Cherie wore a champagne-coloured dress and matching coat.

The old guard argued that trends showed they were regaining strength under Smith's strong leadership.
[250] On 22 December 2007, it was disclosed that Blair had joined the Roman Catholic Church. The sketch was made for the BBC Red Nose Day fundraising programme of 2007. [29][30], With a general election due, Blair had not been selected as a candidate anywhere. "[226] The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change warned of growing Iranian threat. [22][23], In 2008, she launched her foundation, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, a development organisation that aims to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries. [67], Blair ordered Operation Barras, a highly successful SAS/Parachute Regiment strike to rescue hostages from a Sierra Leone rebel group. Under Blair, the party used the phrase "New Labour" to distance itself from previous Labour politics and the traditional idea of socialism. Lord Avebury said: "The public can now scrutinise the timing of his (Murdoch's) contacts with the former Prime Minister, to see whether they can be linked to events in the outside world. At the age of thirty, he was elected as MP for Sedgefield in 1983; despite the party's landslide defeat at the general election. As a combined result of the Blair–Brown pact, Iraq war and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour Party for Blair to resign. [134], However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of the UK government and Prime Minister with the US White House and President.
[269], On 16 February 2009, Blair was awarded the Dan David Prize by Tel Aviv University for "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict". Euan Blair is not the popular face of television but comes into the limelight being the son of Tony Blair and Cherie Blair.

Aged 43, Blair became the youngest person to become Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister aged 42 in 1812.

In Ballyshannon, Corscadden's wife, Sarah Margaret (née Lipsett), gave birth above the family's grocery shop to Blair's mother, Hazel. [67], From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of George W. Bush, participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In his post-9/11 speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend than Great Britain". Tony Blair was a fierce advocate for university education while in office from 1997 to 2007.