Tony Blair's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 2 May 1997 when he accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding John Major of the Conservative Party, and ended on 27 June 2007 upon his resignation.

He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history after Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office, and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.

In addition, Blair saw the introduction of a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, constitutional reform such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, an extensive expansion of LGBT+ rights in the UK, and significant progress in the Northern Ireland peace process with the passing of the landmark Good Friday Agreement.

Blair supported the United States by ensuring that the British Armed Forces participated in the War in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al-Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden.

He had a surge in popularity at the time of terrorist bombings of London of July 2005, but by the Spring of 2006 faced significant difficulties, most notably with scandals over failures by the Home Office to deport illegal immigrants.

In 2005, Blair became the longest-serving Labour prime minister in British history, surpassing the near eight-year total Harold Wilson served over his two terms in office.

Blair's election as leader saw Labour support surge higher still in spite of the continuing economic recovery and fall in unemployment that the Conservative government led by John Major had overseen since the end of the 1990–1992 recession.

The New Labour brand was developed to regain trust from the electorate and to portray a departure from their traditional socialist policies which was criticised for its breaking of election promises and its links between trade unions and the state, and to communicate the party's modernisation to the public.

[6] Immediately after becoming chancellor, 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.

Together with the Government's decision to remain within projected Conservative spending limits for its first two years in office, it helped to reassure sceptics of the Labour Party's fiscal "prudence".

In the early years of his first term, Blair relied on political advice from a close circle of his staff, among whom was his press secretary and official spokesman Alastair Campbell.

Also in Blair's team were a number of strong female aides, who acted as gatekeepers and go-betweens, including Anji Hunter, Kate Garvey, Ruth Turner and Sally Morgan.

As a means of reducing energy costs and therefore the incidence of fuel poverty, a new programme of grants for cavity wall and loft insulation and for draught proofing was launched, with some 670,000 homes taking up the scheme.

While in opposition, the Labour Party had criticised the Conservatives for their perceived weakness during the Bosnian war, and Blair was among those urging a strong line by NATO against Slobodan Milošević.

A memorandum from a July 2002 meeting that was leaked in April 2005 showed that Blair believed that the British public would support regime change in the right political context; the document, however, stated that legal grounds for such action were weak.

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.

In October 2004, the UK government agreed to a request from US forces to send a battalion of the Black Watch regiment to the American sector to free up US troops for an assault on Fallujah.

The subsequent deployment of the Black Watch was criticised by some in Britain on the grounds that its alleged ultimate purpose was to assist George Bush's re-election[citation needed] in the 2004 US presidential election.

On 5 February 2005, Blair became the longest-serving Labour prime minister in British history, surpassing the near eight-year total Harold Wilson served over his two terms in office.

After a similar decision by President Bush, Blair set up another inquiry—the Butler Review—into the accuracy and presentation of the intelligence relating to Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

On 25 August 2004, Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price announced he would attempt to impeach Blair,[34] hoping to invoke a Parliamentary procedure that has lain dormant for 150 years but has never been abolished.

His speech to the 2004 Labour Party conference, for example, was interrupted both by a protester against the Iraq War and by a group that opposed the government's decision to allow the House of Commons to ban fox hunting.

However, former minister Lewis Moonie, a doctor, said the treatment was more serious than Number 10 had admitted: "Anaesthetising somebody and giving their heart electric shocks is not something you just do in the routine run of medical practice."

"[37] Blair underwent a catheter ablation to correct his irregular heartbeat on 1 October 2004, after announcing the procedure on the previous day, in a series of interviews in which he also declared he would seek a third term as prime minister, but not a fourth.

The competition between Paris and London to host the Games had become increasingly heated particularly after French President Jacques Chirac commented three days before the vote that "one cannot trust people [ie: the British] whose cuisine are so bad.

Blair made a statement about the day's bombings, saying that he believed it was "reasonably clear" that it was an act of terror, and that he hoped the people of Britain could demonstrate that their will to overcome the events is greater than the terrorists' wish to cause destruction.

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.

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 were intended "to scare people and to frighten them, to make them anxious and worried".

Further, some Primary care and Hospital Trust sustained significant deficits and had to release staff, which called into question the position of Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

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.