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Tony Blair: Prime Minister Tony Blair
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Tony Blair, full name Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born May 6, 1953) is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister, he served from May 2, 1997 to June 27, 2007. Blair is ... the only person to have led the Labour Party to three consecutive general election victories, and the only Labour Prime Minister to serve more than one full consecutive term.
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For 10 years Tony Blair has been the stadium rock star of British prime ministers. Like other famed performers before him, he has taken many final curtain calls before the very last curtain falls tomorrow, when Gordon Brown will take his place. Some of the reception for Mr. Blair has praised a courageous friend of the United States and an agent of political change for a Labour Party that was unelectable before he led it. Other judgments, from one-time fans and friends, have been their last raging shrieks of betrayal. The politician who so eloquently advanced the case for confronting terror after 9/11 has received more broken bottles than bouquets. The orator whose press-conference duets with George W. Bush set so much of the storyline for the wars ahead will have a wide range of reviews to study when he is finally, finally gone.
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Prime Minister Tony Blair has a new Home Secretary who is even more authoritarian than the last. And just before the General Election Blair said the decision to downgrade cannabis was being looked at again amid emerging evidence that cannabis "isn't quite as harmless as people make out".
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Tony Blair will try to draw a line under the cabinet reshuffle row tomorrow with a speech making clear that he will not back off from radical reform of Britain's public services. In a move aimed at kickstarting a summer of campaigning on voters' main concerns, the Prime Minister will declare that reform is essential to give the poorest in society the same chances in life as the better off. The message, that the choices offered by specialist schools and foundation hospitals are central to social justice, will delight New Labour modernisers worried by the departure of the cabinet minister Alan Milburn last week. It is ... intended to underline Mr. Blair's desire to be seen to be focusing again on domestic issues after the war on Iraq and disputes over the European Convention. With party strategists acutely aware of voters' scepticism about the Prime Minister's globetrotting, ministers will be employed over the summer recess to campaign ruthlessly on the public's priorities of health, education, crime and asylum. The campaign will run until the next Labour Party conference and use the first two-week return of the Commons in September to send out the message that the Government is hard at work on delivery.
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Tony Blair became the youngest British prime minister of the 20th century when he took office in 1997. Blair was born in Scotland but spent much of his childhood in Durham, England. He studied law at Oxford and then practiced law until 1983, when he was elected as member of Parliament from Sedgefield. Blair was a member of the Labour Party, which at the time was dominated politically by the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher. Blair was soon a rising star of what became known as the "new Labour" movement, with positions more centrist on fiscal affairs and social issues like crime. He became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, and three years later was named prime minister, replacing John Major, when Labour won a Parliamentary majority.
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Tony Blair is married to noted barrister Cherie Booth whom he met in 1976 whilst both were pupil barristers in the same Chambers. They have three sons (Euan, Nicky and Leo) and one daughter (Kathryn). His youngest son, Leo, born 20 May 2000, was the first child to be born to a serving Prime Minister since the 19th century. Whilst the Blairs have been keen to shield their children from the media spotlight, this has not always been possible. Leo became a focal point for a debate over the MMR vaccine. Tony Blair refused to confirm whether Leo has received the vaccine.
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Prime Minister Tony Blair