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The Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair (born 6 May 1953) has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1997, when he brought the Labour Party into power after 18 consecutive years of Conservative government.
After becoming the Leader of the Labour Party in 1994 following the death of John Smith, Blair led the party towards the centre of British politics, using the term " New Labour" as a slogan to describe a party more favourable to private industry. However, critics to the left feel that in the process he has compromised its founders' principles, and that the government places insufficient emphasis on the redistributionIncome redistribution or redistribution of wealth is a political policy promoted by members of the political left, especially socialists, and opposed by members of the political right. The basic premise of the belief is that money should be more equally d of wealth. Since the September 11th terrorist attackThe attacks of September 11, 2001 were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Nineteen members of the al-Qaida militant Islamist group hijacked four aircraft. They crashed two into the two towers of the his agenda has been dominated by foreign affairs, where he has supported the USA in the " War on Terror" and sent British forces to participate in the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath.
1 Early life
Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father Leo was a barrister and later a law lecturer who was active in the Conservative Party. Leo Blair had ambitions to stand for Parliament in Durham but was thwarted when he had a stroke when Blair was 11, an event which affected Blair deeply. He spent most of his childhood years in Durham, where between the age of 13 and 15 he worked during the school holidays as a bicycle repairer in the local hardware store, "Jonathon Willikstop's". After attending the Durham Choristers School , Blair was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh (sometimes called the " Eton of Scotland"), where he met Charlie Falconer whom he would later make Lord Chancellor. He read law at St. John's College, Oxford. During his college years he also played guitar and sang for a rock band called Ugly Rumours. He obtained a degree and went on to enroll as a trainee barrister in the Chambers of Derry Irvine where he met his future wife, Cherie Booth.
2 Begins political career
Shortly after graduation in 1975 he joined the Labour Party. During the early 1980s he was involved in the Hackney South Labour Party, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" who appeared to be taking control of the party. However, his attempt to secure selection as a candidate for Hackney Borough Council was unsuccessful. In 1982 he was selected to stand for Parliament in a by-election held in the safe Tory seat of Beaconsfield. He won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit, but impressed the then Labour Party leader Michael Foot.
In 1983 Blair found that the newly-created seat of Sedgefield, near where he had grown up in Durham, had no Labour candidate. Several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were interested, but Blair managed to win the nomination. The seat was safely Labour despite the party's collapse in the 1983 UK general election; Blair was helped on the campaign trail by Patricia Phoenix, the girlfriend of his father-in-law Anthony Booth.
