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Tony Blair: Parties
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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 (née 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 née 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.
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Blair has ... taken a high profile position on British-Irish relations. In the 30-year war in Northern Ireland between the Catholic minority and the Protestant, British-favoring majority, he has broken with the previous administration's position that all sides must lay down arms before sitting down to talk. Instead, "parallel decommissioning" calls for both sides to gradually lay down arms while talking. Although not handicapped as were his predecessors by a reliance on Northern Ireland's Protestant voters, Blair has been aware of trying to look even handed. In a series of peace talks between the warring factions, Blair has supported a peaceful Northern Ireland. He continually negotiated to keep all the political parties at the table, even those with paramilitary links.
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In the 2001 general election campaign, Blair emphasised the theme of improving public services, notably the National Health Service and the State education system. The Conservatives concentrated on opposing British membership of the Euro, which did little to win over floating voters. The Labour Party largely preserved its majority, and Blair became the first Labour Prime Minister to win a full second term. However, the election was notable for a large fall in voter turnout.
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While Blair's father had been a Tory, Blair joined the Labour Party. In the university days he had read Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky, and even then was exploring how to change the Labour Party. An article in New York Review of Books ... claimed, "it is inconceivable that Blair was left untouched" by witnessing the power of the local miners where he grew up. (The Blair family had moved to the industrial city of Durham in northern England after spending several years in Australia.) Nationally, the miners were the main strength of the Labour Party, and the Durham miners were an important political force. In fact, Durham City and County Durham voted labour; only the cathedral, castle and university were Tory.
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Mr. Blair took a skeptical Britain to war in uncritical partnership with President Bush, invoking the same kind of shoddy intelligence and exaggerated warnings of imminent danger. Support for the war in Britain was always thin. Those who initially backed the decision to invade did so mainly on the basis of Mr. Blair's claims that Iraq had active unconventional weapons programs. When those claims proved empty, Mr. Blair's personal credibility took an enormous hit from which it has never fully recovered.
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Blair entered politics in 1983, winning a seat for Labour at the age of 30. Within two years, he was beginning to attract attention within the party. He was moving up the ranks from the backbenches to become a major treasury critic. By 1988, he was in the shadow cabinet – appointed shadow secretary of state for energy.
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