Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a
British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May
1997 to 27 June 2007,
Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to
2007 and Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. On the day he stood down as Prime Minister, he was
appointed official Envoy of the Quartet on the
Middle East on behalf of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia, and stepped down as an MP.[2]
Tony Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in July
1994 following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under
Blair's leadership the party abandoned many policies that it had held for decades. Labour won a landslide victory in the 1997 general
election, which ended 18 years of rule by the Conservative Party with the
heaviest Conservative defeat since 1832.[3]
Blair is the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister and the only person to have led the Labour Party to three
consecutive general election victories.
Gordon Brown, Blair's Chancellor of the
Exchequer during his ten years in office, succeeded him as Leader of the Labour Party on 24
June 2007 and as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007.[4]
Background and family life
Blair was born at the Queen Mary Maternity Home[5] in Edinburgh, Scotland on 6 May 1953,[1] the second son of Leo and Hazel
Blair (n??e Corscadden). Leo Blair, the illegitimate[6]
son of two English actors, had been adopted by a Glasgow shipyard worker named James Blair and his wife Mary as a baby. Hazel
Corscadden was the daughter of George Corscadden, a butcher and Orangeman who had
moved to Glasgow in 1916 but returned to (and later died in) Ballyshannon in 1923, where
his wife Sarah Margaret n??e Lipsett gave birth to Blair's mother Hazel above her family's grocery shop.[7][8] The Lipsett family in Donegal supposedly originated with a German
Jewish immigrant to Ireland prior to the 18th century.[9] George Corscadden was from a family of Protestant farmers in County Donegal,
Ireland,[10] who descended
from Scottish settlers that took their family name from Garscadden, now part of Glasgow. The Blair family was often taken on holiday
to Rossnowlagh, a beach resort near Hazel's hometown of Ballyshannon in south County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.[citation needed] Tony Blair has one elder brother, William Blair, who is a barrister and Queen's Counsel (QC), and a younger sister, Sarah. Blair spent the first 19 months of his life at the
family home in Paisley Terrace in the Willowbrae area of Edinburgh. During this period his father
worked as a junior tax inspector whilst also studying for a law degree from the University of Edinburgh.[5] His family spent three and a half years in the 1950s living in
Adelaide, Australia, where his father was a lecturer in law
at the University of Adelaide.[11] The Blairs lived close to the university, in the suburb of Dulwich.
The family returned to Britain in the late 1950s, living for a time with Hazel Blair's stepfather William McClay and her
mother at their home in Stepps, near Glasgow. He spent the remainder of his childhood in
Durham, England, his father being by then a lecturer at
Durham University. After attending Durham's Chorister School from 1961 to 1966,[12] Blair boarded at Fettes College, a notable independent school in Edinburgh, where he met Charlie Falconer (a pupil at the rival Edinburgh Academy), whom he later appointed Lord Chancellor.
He reportedly modelled himself on Mick Jagger.[13] His teachers were unimpressed with him: his biographer, John Rentoul reported that, "All the
teachers I spoke to when researching the book said he was a complete pain in the backside, and they were very glad to see the
back of him".[14] Blair was arrested at Fettes, having being
mistaken for a burglar as he climbed into his dormitory using a ladder, after being out late.[15]
Tony Blair's wife,
Cherie Booth QC
After Fettes, Blair spent a year in London, where he attempted to find fame as a rock
music promoter, before going up to the University of Oxford to
read jurisprudence at St John's
College. As a student, he played guitar and sang for a rock
band called Ugly Rumours. During this time, he dated future
American Psycho director Mary
Harron.[16] He became influenced by fellow student
and priest Peter Thomson, who awakened within Blair a deep concern for religious faith and left
wing politics. Whilst at Oxford, Blair's mother Hazel died of cancer which was said to have greatly affected Blair. After
graduating from Oxford in 1976 with a Second Class Honours BA in
Jurisprudence, Blair became a member of Lincoln's Inn, enrolled as a pupil barrister and
met his future wife, Cherie Booth (daughter of the actor Tony Booth) at the Chambers founded by Derry Irvine (who was to be Blair's first Lord Chancellor), 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers.He acted predominantly for employers or wealthier clients,
as in Nethermere v. Gardiner where he unsuccessfully defended employers that had refused
holiday pay to employees at a trouser factory. Rentoul records that, according to his lawyer friends, Blair was much less
concerned about which party he was affiliated with than about his aim of becoming Prime Minister.
Blair married Booth, a practising Roman Catholic and future Queen's Counsel, on 29 March 1980. They
have four children (Euan, Nicky, Kathryn and
Leo). Leo (born 20 May 2000) was
the first legitimate child born to a serving Prime Minister in over 150 years, since Francis Russell was born to Lord John Russell on 11 July 1849.
Although the Blairs stated that they had wished to shield their children from the media, their children's education was a
cause of political controversy. All three attended the Roman Catholic London Oratory
School, criticised by left-wingers for its selection procedures, instead of a poorly-performing Roman Catholic school in Labour-controlled Islington, where they then lived, in Richmond Avenue. There was further criticism when it
was revealed that Euan received private coaching from staff from Westminster
School.
Early political career
Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975. During
the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where he aligned himself with
the "soft left" of the party. He unsuccessfully attempted to secure selection as a candidate
for Hackney Borough Council. Through his father-in-law, the actor Tony Booth, he contacted Labour MP
Tom Pendry to ask for help in pursuing a Parliamentary career. Pendry gave him
a tour of the House of Commons and advised him to stand for selection as a candidate in the forthcoming by-election in the safe Conservative seat of
Beaconsfield, where Pendry knew a senior member of the local
party. Blair was chosen as the candidate; at the Beaconsfield by-election
he won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit, but he impressed Labour Party leader Michael
Foot and acquired a profile within the party. In contrast to his later centrism, Blair described himself in this period as
a Socialist. A letter that he wrote to Foot in July 1982, eventually published in June 2006,
gives an indication of his outlook at this time.[17]
In 1983 Blair found that the newly created constituency of Sedgefield, a notionally safe Labour seat near where he had grown up in
Durham, had no Labour candidate. Several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were
interested in securing selection to fight the seat. He found a branch that had not made a nomination and arranged to visit them.
With the crucial support of John Burton, he won their endorsement; at the last minute he was
added to the shortlist and won the selection over displaced sitting MP Les Huckfield.
Burton later became his agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies.
Blair's election literature in the 1983 UK general election
endorsed left-wing policies that the Labour Party advocated in the early 1980s. He called for Britain to leave the
EEC, though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing
membership. He also supported unilateral nuclear disarmament as a member of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Blair was helped on the campaign
trail by soap actress Pat Phoenix, his father-in-law's
girlfriend. Blair was elected as MP for Sedgefield, despite the party's landslide defeat in the general election.
Blair stated in his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 6
July 1983: "I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual
fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an
existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for cooperation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for
equality".[18][19] The Labour Party is declared in its constitution to be a democratic socialist party,[20] rather than a social democratic party???Blair himself
organised this declaration of Labour to be a socialist party when he dealt with the
change to the party's Clause IV in their constitution.
In opposition
Once elected, Blair's ascent was rapid and he received his first front bench appointment in 1984 as assistant Treasury
spokesman. In May 1985 he appeared on BBC's Question Time arguing that the Conservative
Government's Public Order White Paper was a threat to civil liberties.[21] Blair demanded an inquiry into the Bank of England's
decision to rescue the collapsed Johnson Matthey Bank in October
1985, and embarrassed the government by finding a European Economic Community
report critical of British economic policy that had been countersigned by a member of the Conservative government. By this time
Blair was aligned with the reforming tendencies in the party, headed by leader Neil
Kinnock, and was promoted after the 1987 election to the
shadow Trade and Industry team as spokesman on the City of London. In 1987, he stood for
election to the Shadow Cabinet receiving 77 votes.
After the stock market crash of October 1987, Blair raised his profile further
when he castigated City traders as "incompetent" and "morally dubious", and criticised poor service for small investors at the
London Stock Exchange. In 1988 Blair entered the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for
Energy and the following year he became Shadow Employment Secretary. In this post he realised that the Labour Party's
support for the emerging European "Social Charter" policies on employment law meant dropping
the party's traditional support for closed shop arrangements, whereby employers required all
their employees to be members of a trade union. He announced this change in December 1989,
outraging the left wing of the Labour Party. As a young and telegenic Shadow Cabinet member, Blair was given prominence by the
party's Director of Communications, Peter
Mandelson. He gave his first major platform speech at the 1990 Labour Party
conference.
In the run-up to the 1992 general election, Blair worked to
modernise Labour's image and was responsible for developing the controversial minimum wage
policy.
When Neil Kinnock resigned as party leader after Labour's fourth successive election defeat, Blair became Shadow Home Secretary under John Smith. The
Labour Party at this time was widely perceived as weak on crime and Blair worked to change this, accepting that the prison
population might have to rise, and bemoaning the loss of a sense of community, which
he was prepared to blame (at least partly) on "1960s liberalism". On the other hand, he spoke in support of equalising the
age of consent for gay sex at 16, and
opposed capital punishment. He defined his policy, in a phrase coined by
Gordon Brown, as "Tough on crime, tough on the
causes of crime".
In 1993, while still Shadow Home Secretary, Blair attended the annual invitation-only Bilderberg conference.[22]
John Smith died suddenly in 1994 of a heart attack. Blair beat John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in the subsequent leadership election. After becoming Leader of the Opposition, Blair was, as is customary for the holder of that
office, appointed a Privy Counsellor, which permitted him to
be addressed with the style "The Right
Honourable".
Leader of the Labour Party
The cover of Labour's
1997 general election manifesto
Blair announced at the end of his speech at the 1994 Labour Party conference that he intended to replace Clause IV of the party's constitution with a new statement of aims and values. This involved the deletion of
the party's stated commitment to "the common ownership of the means of production and exchange", which was widely interpreted as referring to wholesale
nationalisation. The clause was replaced by a statement that the party is one of
democratic socialism. A special conference approved this highly symbolic change in
April 1995.
Blair also revised party policy in a manner that enhanced the image of Labour as competent and modern using the term "New
Labour" to distinguish the party from its past. Although the transformation aroused much criticism (its alleged superficiality
drawing fire both from political opponents and traditionalists within the "rank and file" of his own party), it was nevertheless
successful in changing public perception. At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on
coming to office were "education, education and education". Aided by the unpopularity of John
Major's Conservative government (itself deeply divided over the European Union),
"New Labour" won a landslide victory in the 1997 general election
with Blair the youngest person???at age 43???to attain the office of Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812???at age 42.[23]
Prime Minister
-
Blair became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on
2 May 1997, serving concurrently as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the
Civil Service, Leader of the Labour Party, and Member of Parliament for the constituency of Sedgefield in the North East of
England and Privy
Counsellor. With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair
was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to lead the party to three consecutive general election
victories.
Blair addressing a crowd in
Armagh in 1998
Blair is both credited with, and criticised for, moving the Labour Party towards the centre
of British politics, using the term "New Labour" to distinguish his
pro-market policies from the more collectivist
policies which the party had espoused in the past.
In domestic government policy, Blair significantly increased public spending on health
and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas. Blair's tenure also saw the introduction
of a National Minimum Wage, tuition fees for higher education, and
constitutional reform such as devolution in
Scotland and Wales. The British economy performed well, and
Blair kept to Conservative commitments not to increase income tax, although he did introduce a large number of subtle tax
increases referred to as stealth taxes by his opponents.
His contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process
by helping to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement after 30 years of conflict was
widely recognised.[24][25] From the start of the War on Terror in
2001, Blair strongly supported United States foreign policy,
notably by participating in the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. He encountered fierce criticism as a result, over the policy itself and the
circumstances in which it was decided upon, especially his claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction (which
have not been discovered in Iraq). For his unwavering support in the security of the United States, Mr. Blair was honored with
the Congressional Gold Medal on July 18th, 2003.
Following pressure from the Labour Party, on 7 September 2006 Blair publicly stated he would step down as party leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference which was held from 10
September 2007 ??? 13 September 2007,[26] having promised to
serve a full term during the previous general election campaign.
Relationship with Parliament
Blair changed Parliamentary procedures significantly. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to replace the then
twice-weekly 15 minute sessions of Prime Minister's Questions, held on a
Tuesday and Thursday, with a single 30 minute session on a Wednesday. This reform was said to have led to greater efficiency, but
critics have noted that it is easier to prepare for one long set of questions than for two shorter sessions. In addition to PMQs,
Blair held monthly press conferences, at which he fielded questions from journalists.[27][28]
Other procedural reforms included changing the official times for Parliamentary sessions in order to have Parliament operate
in a more business-like manner.
Resignation
On 10 May 2007, Blair announced during a speech at the Trimdon
Labour Club in his Sedgefield constituency his intention to
resign as both Labour Party leader and Prime Minister the following June. On June 24 he formally
handed over the leadership of the Labour Party to Gordon Brown at a special party
conference in Manchester. Blair tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom to the Queen on 27 June 2007, his successor Gordon Brown
assuming office the same afternoon. He also resigned his seat in the House of Commons in the traditional form of accepting the
Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds to which he was appointed by Gordon Brown in one
of the latter's last acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer.[29][30] (It is
impossible to resign from the UK Parliament, so this device is used for MPs wishing to step down.)[31]
The resulting Sedgefield by-election was won by Labour's candidate,
Phil Wilson. Blair has not to date issued a list of Resignation Honours; it has been suggested that the list was delayed because of the
Cash for Honours investigation by the police. However, that investigation has now ended and no list has been produced; should
Blair choose not to issue one he will be the first Prime Minister of the modern era not to do so.[32]
Post-Prime Ministerial career
Middle East envoy
On 27 June, 2007, he officially resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after ten years in office, and Blair was
officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the
United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia.[2] Blair originally indicated that he would retain his parliamentary seat after his resignation as
Prime Minister came into effect; however, he resigned from the Commons on being confirmed for the Middle East role, by taking up
an office for profit .[29] President George W. Bush had preliminary talks with
Blair to ask him to take up the envoy role. White House sources stated that "both Israel and the Palestinians had signed up to
the proposal".[33][34]
Private sector
In January 2008 it was confirmed that Blair would be joining investment bank JPMorgan
"in a senior advisory capacity"[35] and that he would advise
the insurance firm Zurich on climate change. His combined earnings then
reached over ??7m a year.[36]
Teaching
Yale University announced on March 72008 that Blair will teach a course on issues of faith and globalization at the Yale Schools of Management and Divinity as a Howland distinguished fellow during the 2008–2009 academic year.[37]
Potential candidacy for President of Europe
Media has speculated that Blair is planning to become the first President
of the European Council (often touted as the "President of the European Union" or the "President of Europe"), a post
created in the Treaty of Lisbon that would come into force in 2009, if
successfully ratified.
Blair has been the most common name connected with the post. Touted as far back as 2002, rumours re-emerged since his
resignation.[38] In June 2007
French president Nicolas Sarkozy was the first leader to propose that Blair be the first
president,[39] support which was reiterated in October 2007
following an agreement on the Treaty of Lisbon.
Gordon Brown, Blair's successor, added his support but noted it was premature to discuss
candidates before the treaty was approved. A spokesman for Tony Blair has not ruled out Blair accepting the post, saying he was
concentrating on his current role in the Middle East. Some believe he is unlikely to take the position as it comes with few
powers.[40] Blair was later invited to speak on European
issues at a rally of Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Movement, on
12 January 2008. This fueled speculation further.[41][42]
He is intelligent, he is brave and he is a friend. We need him in Europe. How can we govern a continent of 450 million people
if the President changes every six months and has to run his own country at the same time? I want a President chosen from the top
- not a compromise candidate - who will serve for two-and-a-half years.
—
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, January
2008, [43]
Honours
In May 2007, before his resignation, it was reported[44]
that Blair would be offered a Knighthood in the Order of the Thistle, rather than
the Order of the Garter, due to his Scottish connections. No such move has been
reported since, and, on St Andrew's Day, the Queen appointed two men to the only
openings in the limited Order.
Relationship with media
Rupert Murdoch
Tony Blair's close relationship with Rupert Murdoch and the reciprocated unprecedented
support which he received from Murdoch's globally influential News Corporation media
empire, has been the subject of much criticism.[45][46]
Contacts with UK media proprietors
A Cabinet Office freedom of
information response, released the day after Blair handed over power to Gordon
Brown, documents Blair having various official phone calls and meetings with Rupert
Murdoch of News Corporation and Richard
Desmond of Northern and Shell Media.[47]
The response includes contacts "clearly of an official nature" in the specified period, but excludeds contacts "not clearly of
an official nature."[48] No details were given of
what subjects discussed. In the period between September 2002 and April 2005, Blair and Murdoch are documented speaking 6 times;
three times in the 9 days before the Iraq war, including the eve of the March 20 US and UK
invasion, and on January 29, April 25 and October 3 2004. Between January 2003 and February 2004, Mr Blair had three meetings
with Richard Desmond; on January 29 and September 3 2003 and February 23 2004.[49][50]
The information was disclosed after a three and a half year battle by the Lib Dem
Lord Avebury.[47] Lord Avebury's initial October 2003 information request was dismissed by then leader of the
Lords, Baroness Amos.[47] A following complaint was rejected, with Downing Street
claiming the information compromised free and frank discussions, while Cabinet Office
claimed releasing the timing of the PM's contacts with individuals is undesirable, as it might lead to the content of the
discussions being disclosed.[47] While awaiting a
following appeal from Lord Avebury, the cabinet office announced that it would release the information. 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."[47]
Media portrayal
Tony Blair is acknowledged by most to be a highly skilful media performer who comes over as charismatic, informal and
articulate. A few months after becoming Prime Minister he gave a tribute to Diana,
Princess of Wales on the morning of her death in August 1997, in which he famously described her as "the People's
Princess".
After taking office in 1997, Blair gave particular prominence to his press secretary, who became known as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (the two roles have since been separated). Blair's first
PMOS was Alastair Campbell, who served in that role from May 1997 to 8 June 2001, after which he served as the Prime Minister's Director of
Communications and Strategy until his resignation on 29 August 2003 in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry. Campbell acquired a reputation
as a sinister and Machiavellian figure, and both Blair and Campbell have frequently
been criticised or satirised for their allegedly excessive use of "spin" and news management techniques (see below under Criticism).
Relationship with Gordon Brown
- See also: Blair-Brown deal
After the death of John Smith in 1994, both Blair and Gordon Brown were viewed as possible candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party. They had agreed
that they would not stand against each other. Brown had previously been considered to be the more senior of the two and he
understood this to mean that Blair would give way to him. It soon became apparent, however, that Blair had greater public
support.[51] This gave rise to the alleged Blair-Brown deal. At certain times, Deputy Prime
Minister John Prescott has reportedly acted as their "marriage guidance
counsellor".[52]
Religious faith
On 22 December 2007, it was disclosed that Blair had
converted to the Catholic faith, and that it was "a private matter".[53][54] He had informed Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June 2007 that he wanted to become Catholic. The Pope and his advisors
criticised some of Blair's political actions, but followed up with a reportedly unprecedented red-carpet welcome that included
Archbishop of Westminster Cormac
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who would be responsible for Blair's Catholic instruction.[55][56][57][58][59]
Blair had previously rarely discussed his religious faith in public, but had often been
identified as an Anglo-Catholic???that is, a member of the high church branch of the Church of England, sympathetic to the
beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. His wife Cherie Booth is a practising Roman Catholic, and Blair had attended Catholic Masses at Westminster Cathedral, while on holiday in Italy, and with his family at Number 10 Downing Street. In 1996, he was reprimanded by Basil Cardinal
Hume for receiving Holy Communion at Mass despite not being a Roman Catholic, a
contravention of Catholic Canon Law.[60]
In an interview with Michael Parkinson broadcast on ITV1 on 4 March 2006, Blair referred to the role of
his Christian faith in his decision to go to war in Iraq, stating that he had
prayed about the issue, and saying that God would judge him for his decision:[61] "I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that
judgement is made by other people ??? and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
A longer exploration of his faith can be found in an interview with Third Way
Magazine. He says there that "I was brought up as [a Christian], but I was not in any real sense a practising one
until I went to Oxford. There was an Australian priest at the same college as me who got me interested again. In a sense, it was
a rediscovery of religion as something living, that was about the world around me rather than some sort of special one-to-one
relationship with a remote Being on high. Suddenly I began to see its social relevance. I began to make sense of the
world".[62] The death of Blair's mother Hazel in 1975 is
said to have greatly affected him and prompted his renewed spiritual commitment whilst at Oxford.
These comments prompted a number of questions on Blair's faith. At one point Alastair
Campbell, Blair's director of strategy and communications, intervened in an interview, preventing the Prime Minister from
answering a question about his Christianity, explaining, "We don't do God".[63]
Cherie Blair's friend and "spiritual guru" Carole Caplin is credited with introducing her and her husband to various
New Age symbols and beliefs, including "magic pendants" known as "BioElectric Shields".[64] The most controversial of the Blairs' New Age practices
occurred when on holiday in Mexico. The couple, wearing only bathing costumes, took part in a rebirthing procedure that involved
smearing mud and fruit over each others' bodies while sitting in a steam bath.[65]
Political overview
The Labour Party is historically a socialist political party. In 2001, Tony Blair said, "We
are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and
not as opposites".[66] Blair has rarely applied such labels
to himself, but he promised before the 1997 election that New Labour would govern "from the radical centre", and according to one
lifelong Labour Party member, has always described himself as a social
democrat.[67] However, Labour Party backbenchers and
other left wing critics typically place Blair to the right of centre.[68] A YouGov opinion poll in 2005 also found
that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, place Blair on the right of the political
spectrum.[69][70] The Financial Times on the other hand has argued
that Blair is not conservative, but instead a populist.[71]
Critics and admirers tend to agree that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to occupy the centre ground and
appeal to voters across the political spectrum, to the extent that he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional Labour
Party values.[72] Some left wing critics have argued that
Blair has overseen the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to the right, and that very little now remains of a
Labour Left.[73][74] There is also evidence that Blair's long term dominance of the centre has forced his Conservative
opponents to shift a long distance to the left, in order to challenge his hegemony
there.[75][76]
Blair has raised taxes, implemented redistributive policies, introduced a minimum wage and some new employment rights (while
keeping Margaret Thatcher's trade union legislation), introduced significant constitutional reforms (which remain incomplete and
controversial), promoted new rights for gay people in the Civil Partnership Act
2004, and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors, introduced student tuition fees (also
controversial), sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments, and introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation.
Criticism
-
Main article: Criticism of Tony Blair
Tony Blair has been criticised for his alliance with U.S. President George W. Bush and
his policies in the Middle East, including the Iraq War,
the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[77] Blair is also criticised for an alleged tendency to spin important information in a way that can be misleading.[78] Blair is the first ever Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to have been
formally questioned by police officers whilst in office, although he was not under
caution when interviewed.[79]
Critics also regard Tony Blair as having eroded civil liberties and increased social
authoritarianism, by increasing police powers, in the form of more arrestable offences,
DNA recording, and the issuing of dispersal orders.[80]
Presidentialism
Blair was sometimes perceived as paying insufficient attention both to the views of his own Cabinet colleagues and to those of
the House of Commons.[81] His style was sometimes criticised as not that of a prime minister and head of government, which he was, but of a president and head of
state, which he was not.[82]
