Who was UK prime minister from 1990 to 2009?

Answer 1

Up until 28th November 1990 it was Margaret Thatcher, who had been in office since 2nd May 1979. She was forced to resign due to various reasons of growing domestic unpopularity, but most especially over her attempt to introduce what was called the 'poll tax' (effectively, a tax upon a person's life!) and her creeping introduction of what could have become a police state, with civil liberties being eroded and much brutality and abuse being perpetrated by rogue policemen upon innocent members of the public.

She was replaced in early December '90 by her Chancellor John Major, who won a party leadership contest against Defence secretary Michael Hestletine and another candidate I can't remember offhand right now. Major was in office up until May '97- he saw Britain through the Gulf War and was in office during the collapse of the USSR, as well as signing Britain into the European Union and taking it into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. But the latter move resulted in financial disaster in the Autumn of '92, when the Uk was forced to withdraw from the ERM after not being able to maintain interest rates at the same level they were at in Germany. Billions of pounds were wiped of the UK stock market in hours, and Major's Chancellor Norman Lamont had to devalue the Pound Sterling.

Major also signed the Downing Street Declaration, which paved the way for the Northern Ireland peace process, but became notorious for failing to intervene to prevent the execution of British-American citizen Nick Ingram in August 1995. Ingram held a British passport, and had been on Death Row in Texas for the previous 12 years for the murder of a grocery shop owner- Major could have prevented him going to the electric chair, but despite much coverage in the media of what death in the 'chair' is like (NOT quick and painless by ANY means), Major left Ingram to his fate. His execution was one of the last to be carried out in this way before the US Supreme Court banned the use of the electric chair as 'cruel and unusual'.

On 2nd May 1997, the general public grew weary of 18 years of Tory rule, and Scotland & Wales were by then demanding devolved government. Major was swept from office by Tony Blair heading the New Labour Party, which had abandoned it's Socialist roots and moved to the Centre Right, courting big buisness and scrapping any commitment to public ownership of national assets. Blair introduced devolved Assemblies for Scotland and Wales, banned handguns in the UK and outlawed foxhunting, as well as succesfully improving Britain's economy- he had not long been Prime Minister when Princess Diana was killed on the last day of August '97. But he was soon realised to be nepotistic and morally corrupt, granting unelected Cabinet jobs to favourite cronies, exempting companies from regualtory laws if they were big donors to New Labour, recommending honours and knighthoods to industry heads or sports executives who had done him covert favours, and so on.

He failed to intervene to save the massive Rover car company, which meant the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, and was in office at the time of the World Trade Centre Disaster in New York of 11th December 2001.

It was George W. Bush's response to this that proved to be Blair's undoing- not only did he support US military action against Afghanistan, but was the only world leader to support the Iraq War against Saddam Hussein in April 2003. This was technically illegal under international law and massively unpopular with both the British public and many politicians, seeing an anti-war demonstration in London that was over 2 million strong- there was absolutely no evidence that Hussein had been involved in the New York attacks, or indeed had any weapons of mass destruction. But Blair went ahead and sided with Bush anyway, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of British soldiers and was responsible for the reprisal terrorist attacks against the London transport network on 7th July 2005, in which 51 people were killed. Blair never apologised for his role in the war, and continued to insist that Saddam Hussein had been developing terror-weapons.

His final years in office were characterised by an inclination towards despotic behaviour- some of his key Ministers, including Home secretary David Blunkett, Defence Secretary Chris Hoon and Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman were little better than he was, and presided over cuts in public spending, restrictions in civil liberties and a return to brutal policing. Blair would use bouncers to drag anyone who disagreed with him from the chamber at Party Conferences.

Eventually, his backbenchers rebelled and forced him to resign on 28th June 2007- he was replaced by his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, a Scotsman who had proved to be a competent financial minister. However, as is often the case, good Chancellors don't always make good Premiers, and Brown proved to be a weak and indecisive Prime Minister. Tragedy struck him when he was in office when his firstborn son died in infancy, for which everyone felt sorry. But he lost the 2010 General Election to the Conservatives led by David Cameron- although the Tories won the biggest number of votes, they did not have enough to be able by law to form a Government, so struck a deal with the Liberal Democrats to form a coalition. The LibDems had originally offered a coalition with Labour on the condition that Labour agreed to hold a referendum on electoral reform, but they refused, leaving the Liberal Democrats with no option but to join the Tories.

SO, it was:

1990- Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)

1990-97 John Major (Conservative)

1997-2007 Tony Blair (New Labour

2007-10 Gordon Brown (New Labour)

Answer 2

Britain didn't BEGIN to have a Prime Minister up until the early 18th century- from 1079 up until then it was an Absolute Monarchy, with all power concentrated in the hands of the King.

From Tudor times onwards there WAS a Parliament, which had a Chief Minister and also some power to propose laws, but these had to be approved by the Monarch before they could be enacted. During the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell and his son Thomas, from 1649-60, the power of Parliament was strengthened, but the country was ultimately under a military Dictatorship and the office of Prime Minister still didn't exist.

The forerunner of the office of Prime Minister was called First Lord of the Treasury, a post created by George 1st in 1714- the first was Lord Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax. However, the office of Prime Minister didn't come to be known as such until 1721- the first Premier to be officially known by that title was Sir Robert Walpole, who was in office from 1721-30.

I couldn't begin to give you a list of ALL the British Prime Ministers from Walpole up until the present day, it would simply take too long, but there's a very good Wikipedia site you can access via Google that will do so for you.