LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Tony Blair: Labour Party Conference
built 629 days ago
Blair ... 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]
Source:
The social-darwinist influence was strongest in Blair's education policies. The Blair government consistently emphasised that it wanted high standards in education. But what does that mean exactly? Not that everyone gets a PhD at Oxford or Cambridge, not that everyone will be educated to high standards - that is clearly impossible. They meant that everyone would be assessed by high standards - and the higher the standard of assessment, the more people fail. In 1998 Blair complained to the Labour Party Conference that there was "too much tolerance of mediocrity" in British schools.
Source:
Further pressure was put on Blair in September 2004, during the UK Labour Party conference, when the London Evening Standard newspaper published details of a leaked Pentagon briefing paper, Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategic Lessons Learned. The document reveals that in October 2002, the Pentagon finalized its Full Operational Battle Plan 1003V for the Iraq war, at a time when Blair was insisting that no decisions had been made about whether to go to war.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Labour Party Conference