Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) became Leader of the Labour Party in 1994 after the death of John Smith and won a landslide general election victory in May 1997, ending eighteen years of Conservative government. He went on to win further general elections in 2001 and 2005, making him the only Labour leader to win three consecutive UK general elections.

Domestically, Blair's governments delivered devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, introduced a national minimum wage, passed the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and pursued public service investment in the NHS and schools. His administration also played a central role in the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement of April 1998, which established power-sharing institutions in Northern Ireland.

In foreign policy, Blair championed an interventionist doctrine articulated in his 1999 Chicago speech on the "Doctrine of the International Community," used to justify British participation in the NATO Kosovo campaign (1999) and the intervention in Sierra Leone (2000). After the 11 September 2001 attacks he aligned closely with US President George W. Bush, committing UK forces to operations in Afghanistan (2001) and, most controversially, to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Iraq decision dominated his later premiership and was examined at length by the Chilcot Inquiry, whose report was published in July 2016 and criticised the basis for war and post-conflict planning.

Blair resigned as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007, handing over to Gordon Brown. On the same day he was appointed Special Envoy of the Middle East Quartet (the UN, US, EU and Russia), a role he held until 2015. He later founded the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter on 1 January 2022.