[citation needed]. On 21 July 2005, a second series of explosions were reported in London, two weeks and some hours after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. VAT reg no 816865400. Anthony “Tony” Charles Lynton Blair was born on 6th of May, 1953 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced student tuition fees; sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments, and introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation. Tony Blair plotted to have Jeremy Corbyn thrown out of Labour in 2004, former minister Phil Woolas reveals. At the same time, the repayment of student loans was delayed until the graduate's income was much higher, and grants were reintroduced for some students from poorer backgrounds. Both as a candidate and as Prime Minister, Blair has embraced a presidential style of leadership geared for the age of television and the era of declining faith of political parties".[62]. An article in New York Review of Booksalso claimed, "it is inconceivable that Blair was left untouched" by witnessing the power of the local miners where he grew up. In March 1998, however, Brown responded in his Budget statement by increasing child benefit by £2.50 a week above the rate of inflation, the largest ever increase in the benefit. ", Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, Private Hire Vehicles (Carriage of Guide Dogs) Act 2002, Travel Concessions (Eligibility) Act 2002, British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War, "The end of FoI? At the age of 14 he returned to Edinburgh to finish his education at Fettes College. [20] This later became known by the media as the "Blair doctrine", and played a part in Blair's decision to order the British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War in May 2000. The Adoption and Children Act 2002 enabled unmarried couples to apply to adopt while speeding up adoption procedures, while the Private Hire Vehicles (Carriage of Guide Dogs) Act 2002 banned charges for guide dogs in minicabs. In domestic government policy, Blair significantly increased public spending on healthcare and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas. He helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, securing the historic Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In 1983, Blair earned a seat in Parliament for the Sedgefield District near Durham, where he had spent most of his childhood. Tax credits assisted some 300,000 families (at January 2004) with childcare costs, while the 2004 budget exempted the first £50 of weekly payments to nannies and childminders from tax and National Insurance, restricted to couples earning not more than £43,000 per annum. "‘Tony's war’? [27], On 19 October 2003, it emerged Blair had received treatment for an irregular heartbeat. Proposed laws to cope with the threat of terrorism proved extremely controversial; an amendment to require that glorifying terrorism be deliberate to be an offence was rejected in the House of Commons by just three votes (a result initially announced as a one-vote margin, due to a miscount). But with the supply of healthcare services increasing less quickly than demand, benefits from the NHS have not yet increased to the same degree, and the NHS had an £800,000,000 deficit for the 2005/6 financial year. Under the Homelessness Act 2002, councils had to adopt homelessness strategies and do more for those homeless through no fault of their own, and the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 made it easier to convert long-term residential leasehold into freehold through "commonhold" tenures. Plan involved subjecting Mr Corbyn and troublesome others to 'show trials' From 1997 to 2005, for instance, all the benefits targeted on children through Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Income Support had gone up by 72% in real terms. (2013). The Blair ministry also extended to three-year-olds the right to a free nursery place for half a day Monday to Friday. This was Blair's first defeat on the floor of the House of Commons since he became Prime Minister in 1997, and most commentators saw this as seriously undermining his authority. It was also the deadliest bombing in London since World War II. When after the war, no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq, the two dossiers, together with Blair's other pre-war statements, became an issue of considerable controversy. The first Blair ministry lasted from May 1997 to June 2001. The Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly reported on 2 August, ruled that he had committed suicide, and despite widespread expectations that the report would criticise Blair and his government, Hutton cleared the Government of deliberately inserting false intelligence into the September Dossier, while criticising the BBC editorial process which had allowed unfounded allegations to be broadcast. The rejection by France and the Netherlands of the treaty to establish a constitution for the European Union presented Blair with an opportunity to postpone a UK referendum and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced that the Parliamentary Bill to enact a referendum was suspended indefinitely. Improvements were also made in financial support to pensioners, and by 2004, the poorest third of pensioners were £1,750 a year better off than under the system as it used to be. It was a dramatic change of policy for Blair, who had previously dismissed calls for a referendum unless the constitution fundamentally altered the UK's relationship with the EU. As can be seen, certain ministers, like Jack Straw and John Reid, performed several senior roles across the period. While Blair's father had been a Tory, Blair joined the Labour Party. Following the 2005 general election, in which Labour was re-elected but with a significantly reduced majority; there was constant speculation over the date of Blair's departure from office. Attempts to persuade the IRA to decommission its weapons were unsuccessful, and, in the second set of elections to the Assembly in November 2003, the staunchly unionist Democratic Unionist Party replaced the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party as Northern Ireland's largest unionist party, making a return to devolved government more difficult. These come from some diaries (such as those of Robin Cook) and also from comments and speeches from those who left or were removed from the cabinet (such as Clare Short). "Liberal intervention in the foreign policy thinking of Tony Blair and David Cameron", Daddow, O. [56][57] Tony Blair was born in 1953 in Edinburgh, Scotland. [citation needed] Blair later described the FoIA as one of his "biggest regrets",[4] writing in his autobiography, "I shudder at the imbecility of it. Another World Is Possible", "Blair makes his exit where it all began", "Labour leadership, close of nominations", The Blair interview: I won't be Lord Blair, "Mandarins attack Blair for informal 'sofa' government", "Infinite conditions on the road to peace: the second New Labour government’s foreign policy approach to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict after 9/11", Alan Clark Diaries: Volume 3: The Last Diaries 1993–1999, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Premiership_of_Tony_Blair&oldid=1018758112, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2008, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, His step of strengthening the executive office at. Following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington DC, Blair was very quick to align the UK with the United States, engaging in a round of shuttle diplomacy to help form and maintain an international coalition prior to the 2001 war against Afghanistan. These included: Collectively, Blair's premiership has been informally referred to by many academics and political opponents as a "sofa government", as Blair was reliant on his advisors and close colleagues for decision making, rather than the Cabinet. Whilst serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair concurrently served as the First Lord of the Treasury, the Minister for the Civil Service, the Leader of the Labour Party (until Gordon Brown was declared Labour leader on 24 June 2007) and the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield. In 2003, the Working Families Tax Credit was split into two benefits: a Working Tax Credit which was payable to all those in work, and a Child Tax Credit which was payable to all families with children, whether in work or not. This is a list of nicknames of prime ministers of the United Kingdom. However, dissenting voices quickly vanished as Blair took on European leaders over the future direction of the European Union in June 2005. Even though the attacks on 21 July were less severe than those two weeks earlier, Blair was reported to have said that the bombings in London today were intended "to scare people and to frighten them, to make them anxious and worried". They have termed the use of presidential analogies for Blair as an unfair comparison between two systems that are fundamentally different. Extensive changes were made to the Prime Minister's Office, which also included the appointment of a Chief of Staff. These findings have not prevented frequent accusations that Blair was deliberately deceitful, and, during the 2005 election campaign, Conservative leader Michael Howard made political capital out of the issue. 46,000 British troops, one-third of the total strength of the British Army (land forces), were deployed to assist with the invasion of Iraq. Blair gave strong support to US President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Where the thesis hypothesised about possible WMDs, the Downing Street version presented the ideas as fact. About . During a renewed stay there in August 2006, Blair refused to endorse calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon.[37]. Tony Blair, the former Labour PM, takes part in a Reuters newsmaker Q&A. After the presidential election, Blair tried to use his relationship with President Bush to persuade the US to devote efforts to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After the 2004 Labour Party conference, on 30 September 2004, Blair announced in a BBC interview[47] that he would serve a "full third term" but would not contest a fourth general election. Minister. [11], According to one study, in terms of promoting social equality, the first Blair Government "turned out to be the most redistributive in decades; it ran Harold Wilson's 1960s' government close." It was claimed the increase in university fees violated a promise in Labour's 2001 general election manifesto, though this claim is arguably unsustainable if the relevant promise is interpreted strictly and literally. Shaw, Eric. For those who weren’t around, or who choose to believe that Blairism only unravelled as a result of the war in Iraq after 2003, it’s worth recalling what the early years of his government were actually like. Blair insisted the increased funding would have to be matched by internal reforms. Blair was known as a cheeky, rebellious, and argumentative schoolboy, and at 17 he was threatened with expulsion for persistently breaking school rules. Nationally, the miners were the main stre… Speculation as to the likely timing of Blair's departure increased in May 2006, following Labour's poor results at the English local elections. [68], Political commentators have also pointed to the constant tussle between the Chancellor Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as evidence that the Prime Minister was not all too powerful. David … Tony Blair’s fall from being the most influential figure in British foreign policy to his current state of near-total irrelevance on the topic has been precipitous. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. The following election of a new leader of the Labour Party was expected to take 48 days. Now it fell to Blair to broker a deal on the EU budget during the UK's Presidency of the European Union during the latter half of 2005. "Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and the Eurosceptic Tradition in Britain", Henke, Marina E. (2018) "Tony Blair’s gamble: The Middle East Peace Process and British participation in the Iraq 2003 campaign. The Early Day Motion has now expired. However, early in the UK's six-month term; the 7 July 2005 London bombings distracted political attention from the EU despite some ambitious early statements about Blair's agenda. The former government advisor Andrew Neather in the Evening Standard stated that the deliberate policy of ministers from late-2000 until early-2008 was to open up the UK to mass migration.[17][18]. ", Daddow, O. © 2021 Tutor2u Limited. 214 High Street, (2009). A further briefing paper on Iraq's alleged WMDs was issued to journalists in February 2003. [13], New rights for workers were introduced such as extended parental rights, a significant raising of the maximum compensation figure for unfair dismissal, a restoration of the qualifying period for protection against unfair dismissal to twelve months, and the right to be accompanied by a trade union official during a disciplinary or grievance hearing, whether or not a trade union is recognised. As Prime Minister, Tony Blair was also a central figure on the global stage. Parliamentary secretaries: Paul Goggins, Fiona Mactaggart and Andy Burnham The document subsequently became known as the "Dodgy Dossier".[24]. The science, almost certainly, is correct." While some Blairites moved directly into the minister of state posts they had previously shadowed - Alun Michael to the Home Office; Tessa Jowell to Health; John Reid over to Defence - … in, This page was last edited on 19 April 2021, at 18:19. [12], During its first year in office, the Blair Government made the controversial decision of cutting Lone Parent Benefit, which led to abstentions amongst many Labour MPs. Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb also studied the presidentialisation of the British government, and have mentioned the various aspects of Blair's premiership, that as whole, point to his presidential nature. During that same period, the number of pensioners living in poverty fell by over 75% in absolute terms as a result of initiatives such as the introduction of Winter Fuel Payments, the reduction of VAT on fuel, and the introduction of a Minimum Income Guarantee. That same day, seven of the MPs who signed the letter resigned as Parliamentary Private Secretaries (unpaid and unofficial posts assisting Government ministers). During Blair's first term in office, 100 "Early Excellence" centres opened, together with new nurseries, while 500 Sure Start projects began. Dennis Kavanagh and Anthony Seldon, The Powers Behind the Prime Minister, Harper Collins, 1999. In 2003, Blair was also awarded an Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his support of the United States after 9/11—the first non-American to receive the honour.[23]. The next day, Blair was invited to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II. In November 1998, Blair became the first UK Prime Minister to address Dáil Éireann. At the same time, the remaining student maintenance grant was replaced with a low-interest loan, which was to be repaid once the student was earning over a certain threshold. Tony Blair's premiership has been termed as ‘presidential’ by various political commentators and authors. On 10 May 2007, Blair held a Cabinet meeting where he told his ministers about his resignation plans and later making a speech at the Trimdon Labour Club in his Sedgefield constituency before announcing at a press conference that he would step down as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007 and that he would be asking the NEC to begin seeking a successor as Labour leader immediately. [67] In this context, Blair had four defeats in the Parliament, including an amendment that would have allowed the conditional detention of terrorism suspects. Four controlled explosions, of devices considerably less advanced than those of the previous attacks, were carried out at Shepherd's Bush, Warren Street and Oval underground stations, and on a bus in Shoreditch. The Enterprise Act 2002 included measures to safeguard consumers, while also reforming bankruptcy and establishing a stronger Office of Fair Trading. At the same time, an affair of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with his diary secretary had been made public. In addition, an Employee Relation Act was passed which introduced for the first time ever, the legal right of employees to trade union representation. This election also marks the most recent victory by the Labour Party. He was wary of making direct appeals for regime change, since international law does not recognise this as a ground for war. Foley uses Blair's premiership as a case study to further the ‘presidentialisation thesis’, which is a model used to study the growing power of the British Prime Minister at the behest of the Cabinet, and the Parliament. He did not announce a specific timetable for either his departure or the election of a new leader, but he did state that he would "set a precise date" at some point in the future. He won three elections and governed for ten years. Although the number of children fell, the amount of state support to families with children increased, with money paid only to them (child contingent support) going up by 52% in real terms from 1999 to 2005. Tony Blair's presidential style of leadership was also the subject of study of Michael Foley's book The British Presidency: Tony Blair and the Politics of Public Leadership. At Westminster, he was expected to retire after the proposed UK referendum on a European Union Constitution, but the constitution being thwarted at referendum in other countries negated any need for one in the UK (such a major issue as a union-wide constitution would require unanimity amongst the EU's member states). The local elections in England on 4 May 2006 dealt a blow to Blair, with the loss of 317 seats and 18 councils. In addition, voting experiments resulted in an opening up of postal voting and reform of electoral registration, while the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords was abolished after 700 years. According to one study, the Blair ministry's record on benefits, taken in the round, was "unprecedented," with 3.7% real terms growth each year from 2002 to 2005. Significant change took place to legislation relating to rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people during Blair's period in office. Blair ardently supported United States foreign policy, notably by participating in the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Immediately after taking office, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England the power to set the UK base rate of interest autonomously, as agreed in 1992 in the Maastricht Treaty. [29] The planned procedure was carried out at London's Hammersmith Hospital. Peter Hennessy, The Hidden Wiring, Golllancz, 1995. By Polly Toynbee and David Walker, Ten Years of New Labour edited by Matt Beech and Simon Lee, Transforming Britain: Labour’s Second Term edited by Adrian Harvey, Diane Reay, "Tony Blair, the promotion of the ‘active’educational citizen, and middle‐class hegemony. The Labour Party won the 2005 general election held on Thursday 5 May and a third consecutive term in office, for the first time ever. Blair ’ s most successful Prime Minister the city of Durham in Northern England after several... 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