History UsefulNotes / TonyBlair

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his controversy-proof image, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when [[TheWarOnTerror the Iraq War]] became the one issue he could never escape. In retrospect, some feel that Blair got lucky in facing a succession of terrible Conservative leaders after becoming Prime Minister,[[note]]The first, William Hague, struggled to put across a good public image and was really on a hiding onto nothing succeeding Major. The second, Iain Duncan Smith, is often regarded as the Tory Party's worst leader ever. The third, Michael Howard, didn't do too badly considering he took over from Duncan Smith's disastrous leadership only 18 months before his general election, but suffered in the public eye due to his association with Major's government. The fourth, David Cameron, was seen as a much more credible threat, but didn't really come into his own until Blair had left office.[[/note]] and that a more capable opposition leader would have held his feet to the fire over Iraq much more effectively. Blair's reputation has diminished still further with the Chilcot Report (which found that Blair lied to Parliament and to the British people regarding the information about Iraqi [=WMD=]s; Blair denies this), for which even current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned him. Blair's staunch [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion Europhilia]][[note]]He wanted the UK to join the Euro but intervention by [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown Chancellor Brown]] prevented it, thus sparing the UK the economic fall-out from the Euro crisis; he renounced the UK opt-out from the Social Chapter and part of the UK budget rebate in exchange for, ultimately, very little; he waived a seven-year moratorium on immigration from new EU member states; he refused to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty despite promising one in the 2005 election because he knew it would not pass, although, to be fair, his successor continued this policy.[[/note]] is widely seen as detrimental because it encouraged the conditions that led to the "Leave" result in the 2016 referendum on continued UK membership of the European Union.[[note]]Voters could dismiss economists' warnings about the risks of leaving the EU because many of them had ''also'' warned about the dangers of staying outside the Eurozone; they could also ignore the guarantees and opt-outs that Cameron had secured for the UK in his renegotiation because there was always the chance another Europhile like Blair could come in and just give them up again; they could ''also'' ignore the legislation in place to prevent further political integration without voter consent (the European Union Act 2011) because the previous government had enacted the Treaty of Lisbon without a public vote since it was touted as a "cleaning-up exercise" instead of fundamental change.[[/note]] Blair, for his part, strongly supported the "Remain" campaign during the referendum and has spent most of his time in the public eye since then advocating for a reversal of the result, though the means by which he hopes to achieve that have been (characteristically) vague.

He ended at #67 in ''Series/OneHundredGreatestBritons''.

Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Perhaps unusually, Blair wasn't from the South but in fact started out in UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} (he was born in Edinburgh[[note]]His ''ancestry'' is insanely complicated to explain, as his father was the bastard son of English actors adopted by a Glaswegian dockworker, and his mother was born in County Donegal to an Ulster Scots family, which had in recent generations shuttled between Glasgow (which was roughly where the family had migrated from centuries ago) and Ballyshannon several times. Whew.[[/note]]) and was educated in the English North and Scotland. He became the Labour Party MP for Sedgefield and party leader in 1994. In 1997, he steamrollered UsefulNotes/JohnMajor's Conservatives and won Labour's first election victory in 18 years in a landslide victory.

Despite criticism (most notably for shifting the Labour party massively to the right and for invading Iraq), he captained Labour through three consecutive victories and left by own choice in 2007 after seeing off four opposition leaders before handing over to [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the Chancellor]]. It goes without saying the switch from Captain Charisma to No-Flash Gordon has fuelled several jokes. Blair currently acts as a UN Peace Envoy to the Middle East, something that confuses just about everyone. His premiership also saw a military intervention which ended the Sierra Leone Civil War - and, to this day, Sierra Leone is just about the only country with an unequivocally positive view of him. (UsefulNotes/{{Kosovo}} is the other, due to his staunch support for the 1999 NATO intervention.)

His enduring legacy is to reinvent (with the help of [[UsefulNotes/PeterMandelson Mandy]]) the traditionally blue-collar Labour Party into "New Labour", with middle-class cubicle monkeys as his base. Purists criticized him for this, but Blair was merely a product of his time. His soothing TV manner and propensity to dodge hard issues made him more reminiscent of an American President than PM -- a trend that continued with UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, and made life quite difficult for the more traditional UsefulNotes/GordonBrown and UsefulNotes/TheresaMay.

Not afraid of media, Blair played [[AsHimself himself]] in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' and a sketch with Creator/CatherineTate. Likely the only Prime Minister to have said ''"Am I bovvered?"''.

In British Media he tends to get portrayed either as a lapdog of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush, as the StraightMan to Bush, or as an insincere spin master. He had a habit, especially towards the end of his tenure, of pausing...at the end of every sentence as if trying to make it easier, to cut out sound bites. The apex/nadir of his talking in slogans surely came in Northern Ireland, where he said "This is not the time for soundbites, but I feel the hand of history on my shoulder." It got so pronounced that ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' once played a minute long speech by Tony, then played it again with "The extraneous material" removed, which is to say they played 25 seconds of silence.

Early on in his premiership, Blair was noted for the election catchphrases "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" and "we have three priorities: education, education and education". These were widely parodied, [[MadLibsCatchPhrase madlibs-style]], in the media and to some extent have entered the British lexicon. True to his word, Blair criminalized more than 3,000 (not a typo) acts, one for almost every day New Labour had been in power; most curious was criminalizing "causing a nuclear explosion", as it is remarkably tricky to do this without committing at least one other crime.

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his controversy-proof image, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from. In retrospect, some feel that Blair got lucky in facing a succession of terrible Conservative leaders after becoming Prime Minister[[note]](the first, William Hague, struggled to put across a good public image, and was really on a hiding onto nothing succeeding Major; the second, Iain Duncan Smith, is often regarded as the single worst Tory leader in the party's history; the third, Michael Howard, didn't do too badly considering he had only 18 months to fix the disaster of Duncan Smith's leadership, but was tainted by his association with Major's government; the fourth, David Cameron, was seen as a much more credible threat, but didn't really come into his own until Blair had left office)[[/note]], and that a more capable opposition leader would have held his feet to the fire over Iraq much more effectively. Blair's reputation has diminished still further with the Chilcot Report (which found that Blair lied to Parliament and to the British people regarding the information about Iraqi [=WMD=]s; Blair denies this), for which even current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned him. Blair's staunch [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion Europhilia]][[note]]he wanted the UK to join the Euro but intervention by [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the chancellor]] prevented it, thus sparing the UK the economic fall-out from the Euro crisis; he renounced the UK opt-out from the Social Chapter and part of the UK budget rebate in exchange for, ultimately, very little; he waived a seven-year moratorium on immigration from new EU member states; he refused to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty despite promising one in the 2005 election because he knew it would not pass, although, to be fair, his successor continued this policy[[/note]] is widely seen as detrimental because it encouraged the conditions that led to the LEAVE result in the 2016 referendum on continued UK membership of the European Union[[note]]Voters could dismiss economists' warnings about the risks of leaving the EU because many of them had ''also'' warned about the dangers of staying outside the Eurozone; they could also ignore the guarantees and opt-outs that Cameron had secured for the UK in his renegotiation because there was always the chance another Europhile like Blair could come in and just give them up again; they could ''also'' ignore the legislation in place to prevent further political integration without voter consent (the European Union Act 2011) because the previous government had enacted the Treaty of Lisbon without a public vote since it was touted as a "cleaning-up exercise" instead of fundamental change[[/note]]. Blair, for his part, strongly supported the REMAIN campaign during the referendum and has spent most of his time in the public eye since then advocating for a reversal of the result, though the means by which he hopes to achieve that have been (characteristically) vague.

* He voices himself in WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons episode ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS15E4TheReginaMonologues The Regina Monologues]]'', where the titular family travels to London. Although after he leaves:

* Tony Blair is also made fun of as the predecessor of the fictional Prime Minister in ''Film/LoveActually''. Which resulted in Blair explaining to people that doing something like what the PM did in the movie would be a ''really bad idea''.

* Cartoons in ''The Times'' in the late 1990s flipped the sides, portraying Tony Blair as "Dan Blair, Pilot For The Foreseeable Future" and William Hague, the (bald) leader of the Opposition, as the Mekon.
* Gary Callahan "The Smiler", the second [[PresidentEvil President]] in the sixty-issue ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'' (not a bad run, considering that Creator/WarrenEllis' other works devote a meagre two punchlines to Thatcher), is believed to have been largely based on Tony Blair. Trademarks include a near-permanent grin and an obsession with control and media spin. The main characters quickly come to consider him worse than the previous President, who was based on UsefulNotes/RichardNixon.

** Blair did not appear in the original West End staging of ''Theatre/TheAudience'', written by Morgan, perhaps out of fear that his scenes with the Queen would be too derivative of... well, ''The Queen'', but he was added (and UsefulNotes/JamesCallaghan dropped) when the show moved to Broadway. He stayed on for the show's West End revival, so it looks like he's here to stay.

* ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' started out with two Blair parodies: ''Blairzone'', referencing his "Cool Britannia" attempts to be hip and with it, and "The Vicar of St. Albion's", referencing how some had compared his speech-giving style to that of a sanctimonious parish [[TheVicar vicar]] preaching a sermon. Perhaps unexpectedly, it was the second one that lasted and became very popular, with Cabinet members fulfilling corresponding roles (for instance, UsefulNotes/GordonBrown as the church treasurer) and foreign leaders being slotted into appropriate roles (e.g. American Presidents UsefulNotes/BillClinton and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush were made into the leaders of odd evangelical sects the Church of the Seventh-Day Fornicators and the Church of the Latter Day Morons--or Morbombs during the Iraq War--respectively). "The Vicar of St. Albion's" got weird when Blair very publicly converted to Catholicism shortly after resigning as Prime Minister... (Especially since Blair kept his religion private while in office to ''avoid'' further mockery for being the Vicar of St. Albion's). ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' adapted pretty well: he now makes occasional appearances as the Rev. Imam Rabbi Sri Tony Blair, Chief Executive of super-ecumenical organization [[FunWithAcronyms Drawing All Faiths Together]].
* The Music/PetShopBoys AffectionateParody of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and Tony Blair - "I'm with stupid" - reached number eight as a single on the UK charts. They also wrote "I get along" about his second firing of UsefulNotes/PeterMandelson ([[WordOfGod so they said]]). They also made the extremely creepy [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kx05kU5gZg "Integral"]] about New Labour's increasing tendency to introduce a surveillance society; the fandom sometimes count these three together as the Music/PetShopBoys' "Blair Trilogy".

* Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/TheImaginariumOfDoctorParnassus'' has the character Tony (played by Creator/HeathLedger, Creator/JohnnyDepp and Colin Farrell) which is a parody of Tony Blair because of what Gilliam calls Blair's ability to say incredible and ridiculous things.

* He is a recurring character in the BBC Radio 4 comedy series ''[[Radio/FifteenMinuteMusical 15 Minute Musical]]''.
* ''Series/TheComicStripPresents'' episode "The Hunt for Tony Blair" frames the main events and controversies of Blair's premiership -- Iraq, Afghanistan, the shift from blue collar working class socialist 'old Labour' to middle-class Tory-lite "New Labour", the leadership feud with UsefulNotes/GordonBrown, etc. -- as a 1950s Ealing Studios-style FilmNoir about Blair being on the run after being falsely (or not-so-falsely) accused of several murders.

Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Perhaps unusually, Blair wasn't from the South but in fact started out in UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} (he was born in Edinburgh[[note]]His ''ancestry'' is insanely complicated to explain, as his father was the bastard son of English actors adopted by a Glaswegian dockworker, and his mother was born in County Donegal to an Ulster Scots family, which had in recent generations shuttled between Glasgow (which was roughly where the family had migrated from centuries ago) and Ballyshannon several times. Whew.[[/note]]) and was educated in the English North and Scotland. He became the Labour Party MP for Sedgefield and party leader in 1994. In 1997, he steamrollered UsefulNotes/JohnMajor's Conservatives and won Labour's first election victory in 18 years.

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his controversy-proof image, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from. In retrospect, Blair's reputation has diminished still further with the Chilcot Report (which found that Blair lied to Parliament and to the British people regarding the information about Iraqi [=WMD=]s; Blair denies this), for which even current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned him. Blair's staunch [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion Europhilia]][[note]]he wanted the UK to join the Euro but intervention by [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the chancellor]] prevented it, thus sparing the UK the economic fall-out from the Euro crisis; he renounced the UK opt-out from the Social Chapter and part of the UK budget rebate in exchange for, ultimately, very little; he waived a seven-year moratorium on immigration from new EU member states; he refused to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty despite promising one in the 2005 election because he knew it would not pass, although, to be fair, his successor continued this policy[[/note]] is widely seen as detrimental because it encouraged the conditions that led to the LEAVE result in the 2016 referendum on continued UK membership of the European Union[[note]]Voters could dismiss economists' warnings about the risks of leaving the EU because many of them had ''also'' warned about the dangers of staying outside the Eurozone; they could also ignore the guarantees and opt-outs that Cameron had secured for the UK in his renegotiation because there was always the chance another Europhile like Blair could come in and just give them up again; they could ''also'' ignore the legislation in place to prevent further political integration without voter consent (the European Union Act 2011) because the previous government had enacted the Treaty of Lisbon without a public vote since it was touted as a "cleaning-up exercise" instead of fundamental change[[/note]]. Blair, for his part, strongly supported the REMAIN campaign during the referendum and has spent most of his time in the public eye since then advocating for a reversal of the result, though the means by which he hopes to achieve that have been (characteristically) vague.

His name "Tony Blair, PM" is, amazingly enough, an [[SignificantAnagram anagram]] for "I'm Tory Plan B".

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his controversy-proof image, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from. In retrospect, Blair's reputation has diminished still further with the Chilcot Report (which found that Blair lied to Parliament and to the British people regarding the information about Iraqi [=WMD=]s; Blair denies this), for which even current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned him. Blair's staunch [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion Europhilia]][[note]]he wanted the UK to join the Euro but intervention by [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the chancellor]] prevented it, thus sparing the UK the economic fall-out from the Euro crisis; he renounced the UK opt-out from the Social Chapter and part of the UK budget rebate in exchange for, ultimately, very little; he refused to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty despite promising one in the 2005 election because he knew it would not pass, although, to be fair, his successor continued this policy[[/note]] is widely seen as detrimental because it encouraged the conditions that led to the LEAVE result in the 2016 referendum on continued UK membership of the European Union[[note]]Voters could dismiss economists' warnings about the risks of leaving the EU because many of them had ''also'' warned about the dangers of staying outside the Eurozone; they could also ignore the guarantees and opt-outs that Cameron had secured for the UK in his renegotiation because there was always the chance another Europhile like Blair could come in and just give them up again; they could ''also'' ignore the legislation in place to prevent further political integration without voter consent (the European Union Act 2011) because the previous government had enacted the Treaty of Lisbon without a public vote since it was touted as a "cleaning-up exercise" instead of fundamental change[[/note]]. Blair, for his part, strongly supported the REMAIN campaign during the referendum and has spent most of his time in the public eye since then advocating for a reversal of the result, though the means by which he hopes to achieve that have been (characteristically) vague.

His enduring legacy is to reinvent (with the help of [[UsefulNotes/PeterMandelson Mandy]]) the traditionally blue-collar Labour Party into "New Labour", with middle-class cubicle monkeys as his base. Purists criticized him for this, but Blair was merely a product of his time. His soothing TV manner and propensity to dodge hard issues made him more reminiscent of an American President than PM -- a trend that continues with UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, and made life quite difficult for UsefulNotes/GordonBrown.

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his controversy-proof image, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from. In retrospect, Blair's reputation has diminished still further with the Chilcot Report (which found that Blair lied to Parliament and to the British people regarding the information about Iraqi [=WMD=]s; Blair denies this), for which even current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned him. Blair's staunch [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion Europhilia]][[note]]he wanted the UK to join the Euro but intervention by [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the chancellor]] prevented it, thus sparing the UK the economic fall-out from the Euro crisis; he renounced the UK opt-out from the Social Chapter and part of the UK budget rebate in exchange for, ultimately, very little; he refused to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty despite promising one in the 2005 election because he knew it would not pass, although, to be fair, his successor continued this policy[[/note]] is widely seen as detrimental because it encouraged the conditions that led to the LEAVE result in the 2016 referendum on continued UK membership[[note]]Voters could dismiss economists' warnings about the risks of leaving the EU because many of them had ''also'' warned about the dangers of staying outside the Eurozone; they could also ignore the guarantees and opt-outs that Cameron had secured for the UK in his renegotiation because there was always the chance another Europhile like Blair could come in and just give them up again; they could ''also'' ignore the legislation in place to prevent further political integration without voter consent (the European Union Act 2011) because the previous government had enacted Lisbon without a public vote since it was touted as a "cleaning-up exercise" instead of fundamental change[[/note]]. Blair, for his part, strongly supported the REMAIN campaign during the referendum and has spent most of his time in the public eye since then advocating for a reversal of the result, though the means by which he hopes to achieve that have been (characteristically) vague.

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his controversy-proof image, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from.

* The PetShopBoys AffectionateParody of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and Tony Blair - "I'm with stupid" - reached number eight as a single on the UK charts. They also wrote "I get along" about his second firing of UsefulNotes/PeterMandelson ([[WordOfGod so they said]]). They also made the extremely creepy [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kx05kU5gZg "Integral"]] about New Labour's increasing tendency to introduce a surveillance society; the fandom sometimes count these three together as the PetShopBoys' "Blair Trilogy".

* Gary Callahan "The Smiler", the second [[PresidentEvil President]] in the sixty-issue ''{{Transmetropolitan}}'' (not a bad run, considering that Creator/WarrenEllis' other works devote a meagre two punchlines to Thatcher), is believed to have been largely based on Tony Blair. Trademarks include a near-permanent grin and an obsession with control and media spin. The main characters quickly come to consider him worse than the previous President, who was based on UsefulNotes/RichardNixon.

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Perhaps unusually, Mr. Blair wasn't from the South but in fact started out in UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} (he was born in Edinburgh[[note]]His ''ancestry'' is insanely complicated to explain, as his father was the bastard son of English actors adopted by a Glaswegian dockworker, and his mother was born in County Donegal to an Ulster Scots family, which had in recent generations shuttled between Glasgow (which was roughly where the family had migrated from centuries ago) and Ballyshannon several times. Whew.[[/note]]) and was educated in the English North and Scotland. He became the Labour Party MP for Sedgefield and party leader in 1994. In 1997, he steamrollered UsefulNotes/JohnMajor's Conservatives and won Labour's first election victory in 18 years.

* The unnamed Prime Minister whose dessicated corpse is found in a cupboard in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Aliens of London" is clearly meant to be Tony Blair.

Not afraid of media, Blair played himself in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' and a sketch with Creator/CatherineTate. Likely the only Prime Minister to have said ''"Am I bovvered?"''.

* The Prime Minister in the 2008 ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' miniseries is clearly based on him (confirmed by WordOfGod). He's also a snivelling opportunist who sells Earth out to the [[BigBad Mekon]]. ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' ran a ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' parody in TheEighties where the Mekon represented UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher ("The Maggon") and Tony Blair was often accused of selling out Labour's principles to Thatcherism.

->''"He was the future, [[BrokenPedestal once]]..."''

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Perhaps unusually, Mr. Blair wasn't from the South but in fact started out in UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} (he was born in Edinburgh[[note]]His ''ancestry'' is insanely complicated to explain, as his father was the bastard son of English actors adopted by a Glaswegian dockworker, and his mother was born in [[{{Oireland}} County Donegal]] to an Ulster Scots family, which had in recent generations shuttled between Glasgow (which was roughly where the family had migrated from centuries ago) and Ballyshannon several times. Whew.[[/note]]) and was educated in the English [[OopNorth North]] and Scotland. He became the Labour Party MP for Sedgefield (also OopNorth) and party leader in 1994. In 1997, he steamrollered UsefulNotes/JohnMajor's Conservatives and won Labour's first election victory in 18 years.

Despite criticism (most notably for shifting the Labour party massively to the right and for invading Iraq), he captained Labour through three consecutive victories and left by own choice in 2007 after seeing off four opposition leaders before handing over to [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the Chancellor]]. It goes without saying the switch from Captain Charisma to No-Flash Gordon has fuelled several jokes. Blair currently acts as a UN Peace Envoy to the Middle East, something that [[KnowNothingKnowItAll confuses just about everyone]]. His premiership also saw a military intervention which ended the Sierra Leone Civil War - and, to this day, Sierra Leone is just about the only country with an unequivocally positive view of him. (UsefulNotes/{{Kosovo}} is the other, due to his staunch support for the 1999 NATO intervention.)

His enduring legacy is to reinvent (with the help of [[UsefulNotes/PeterMandelson Mandy]]) the traditionally blue-collar Labour Party into "New Labour", with middle-class cubicle monkeys as his base. Purists criticized him for this, but Blair was merely a product of his time. His soothing TV manner and propensity to dodge hard issues made him more reminiscent of [[EaglelandOsmosis an American President than PM]] -- a trend that continues with UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, and made life quite difficult for UsefulNotes/GordonBrown.

In British Media he tends to get portrayed either as a [[YesMan lapdog]] of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush, as the StraightMan to Bush's [[RedOniBlueOni Red Oni]], or as an insincere spin master. He had a habit, especially towards the end of his tenure, of pausing...at the end of every sentence as if trying to make it easier, to cut out sound bites. The apex/nadir of his talking in slogans surely came in Northern Ireland, where he said "This is not the time for soundbites, but [[HypocriticalHumor I feel the hand of history on my shoulder.]]" It got so pronounced that ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' once played a minute long speech by Tony, then played it again with "The extraneous material" removed, which is to say they played 25 seconds of silence.

Early on in his premiership, Blair was noted for the election catchphrases "tough on crime, tough on [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the causes of crime]]" and "we have three priorities: [[RuleOfThree education, education and education]]". These were widely parodied, [[MadLibsCatchPhrase madlibs-style]], in the media and to some extent have entered the British lexicon. True to his word, Blair criminalized more than 3,000 (not a typo) acts, one for almost every day New Labour had been in power; most curious was criminalizing "causing a nuclear explosion", as it is remarkably tricky to do this without committing at least one other crime.

"Teflon Tony" was also noted for his ControversyProofImage, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity. This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from.

* Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher come in for some ribbing in ''{{Coupling}}''.

* There's Tony Blair in the ending of the ''Albion'' graphic novel. Heh heh.
* The Prime Minister in the 2008 ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' miniseries is clearly based on him (confirmed by WordOfGod). He's also a snivelling opportunist who sells Earth out to the [[BigBad Mekon]]. Hmmmm...
** If intentional, this may be FridgeBrilliance - ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' ran a ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' parody in TheEighties where the Mekon represented UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher ("The Maggon") and Tony Blair was often accused of selling out Labour's principles to Thatcherism.
** Cartoons in ''The Times'' in the late 1990s flipped the sides, portraying Tony Blair as "Dan Blair, Pilot For The Foreseeable Future" and William Hague, the (bald) leader of the Opposition, as the Mekon.
* Gary Callahan "The Smiler", the second [[PresidentEvil President]] in the sixty-issue ''{{Transmetropolitan}}'' (not a bad run, considering that WarrenEllis' other works devote a meager two punchlines to Thatcher), is believed to have been largely based on Tony Blair. Trademarks include a near-permanent grin and an obsession with control and media spin. The main characters quickly come to consider him worse than the previous President, who was based on UsefulNotes/RichardNixon.

* ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' started out with two Blair parodies: ''Blairzone'', referencing his "Cool Britannia" attempts to be hip and with it, and "The Vicar of St. Albion's", referencing how some had compared his speech-giving style to that of a sanctimonious parish [[TheVicar vicar]] preaching a sermon. Perhaps unexpectedly, it was the second one that lasted and became very popular, with Cabinet members fulfilling corresponding roles (for instance, UsefulNotes/GordonBrown as the church treasurer) and foreign leaders being slotted into appropriate roles (e.g. American Presidents UsefulNotes/BillClinton and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush were made into the leaders of odd evangelical sects the Church of the Seventh-Day Fornicators and the Church of the Latter Day Morons--or Morbombs during the Iraq War--respectively).
** "The Vicar of St. Albion's" [[FunnyAneurysmMoment got weird]] when Blair very publicly converted to Catholicism shortly after resigning as Prime Minister... (Especially since Blair kept his religion private while in office to ''avoid'' further mockery for being the Vicar of St. Albion's.)
*** And then immediately started offering the Pope unsolicited advice about modernizing his outlook...
** Actually, ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' adapted pretty well: he now makes occasional appearances as the Rev. Imam Rabbi Sri Tony Blair, Chief Executive of super-ecumenical organization [[FunWithAcronyms Drawing All Faiths Together]].
* The PetShopBoys AffectionateParody of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and Tony Blair - "I'm with stupid" - reached number eight as a single on the UK charts.
** They also wrote "I get along" about his second firing of UsefulNotes/PeterMandelson ([[WordOfGod so they said]]).
** They also made the extremely creepy [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kx05kU5gZg "Integral"]] about New Labour's increasing tendency to introduce a surveillance society; the fandom sometimes count these three together as the PetShopBoys' "Blair Trilogy".

* He is a recurring character in the BBC Radio 4 comedy series ''[[Radio/FifteenMinuteMusical 15 Minute Musical.]]''

* Played by Creator/MichaelSheen in 2006's ''Film/TheQueen'', who previously played him in 2003's ''Film/TheDeal'' and again in 2010's ''The Special Relationship''. Screenwriter Peter Morgan seems to have a [[AuthorAppeal strong interest]] in what Blair is like behind closed doors.

* Played by Creator/MichaelSheen in 2006's ''Film/TheQueen'', who previously played him in 2003's ''TheDeal'' and again in 2010's ''The Special Relationship''. Screenwriter Peter Morgan seems to have a [[AuthorAppeal strong interest]] in what Blair is like behind closed doors.

* Gary Callahan "The Smiler", the second [[PresidentEvil President]] in the sixty-issue ''{{Transmetropolitan}}'' (not a bad run, considering that WarrenEllis' other works devote a meager two punchlines to Thatcher), is believed to have been largely based on Tony Blair. Trademarks include a near-permanent grin and an obsession with control and media spin. The main characters quickly come to consider him worse than the previous President, who was based on RichardNixon.

His enduring legacy was to reinvent the traditionally blue-collar Labour Party into "New Labour", with middle-class cubicle monkeys as his base. Purists criticized him for this, but Blair was merely a product of his time. His soothing TV manner and propensity to dodge hard issues made him more reminiscent of [[EaglelandOsmosis an American President than PM]] -- a trend that continues with UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, and made life quite difficult for UsefulNotes/GordonBrown.

Early on in his premiership, Blair was noted for the election catchphrases "tough on crime, tough on [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the causes of crime]]" and "we have three priorities: [[RuleOfThree education, education and education]]". These were widely parodied, [[MadLibsCatchPhrase madlibs-style]], in the media and to some extent have entered the British lexicon. He was also noted for his ControversyProofImage, with scandals affecting his government seeming not to dent his own popularity (hence the nickname "Teflon Tony"). This made it all the bigger a contrast when the Iraq war became the one issue he could never walk away from.

* Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/TheImaginariumOfDrParnassus'' has the character Tony (played by Creator/HeathLedger, Creator/JohnnyDepp and Colin Farrell) which is a parody of Tony Blair because of what Gilliam calls Blair's ability to say incredible and ridiculous things.

* Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/TheImaginariumOfDrParnassus'' has the character Tony (played by Creator/HeathLedger, Creator/JohnnyDepp and Creator/ColinFarrell) which is a parody of Tony Blair because of what Gilliam calls Blair's ability to say incredible and ridiculous things.

In British Media he tends to get portrayed either as a [[YesMan lapdog]] of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush, as the StraightMan to Bush's [[RedOniBlueOni Red Oni]], or as an insincere spin master. He had a habit, especially towards the end of his tenure, of pausing...at the end of every sentence as if trying to make it easier, to cut out sound bites. The apex/nadir of his talking in slogans surely came in Northern Ireland, where he said "This is not the time for soundbites, but [[HypocriticalHumor I feel the hand of history on my shoulder.]]" It got so pronounced that ''HaveIGotNewsForYou'' once played a minute long speech by Tony, then played it again with "The extraneous material" removed, which is to say they played 25 seconds of silence.

* He voices himself in WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons episode ''The Regina Monologues'', where the titular family travels to London. Although after he leaves:

* He had a brief appearance in ''{{Spooks}}'', where footage of him and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush was used in the context of the Prime Minister meeting the US President.

* Tony Blair is also made fun of as the predecessor of the fictional Prime Minister in ''LoveActually''. Which resulted in Blair explaining to people that doing something like what the PM did in the movie would be a ''really bad idea''.

** If intentional, this may be FridgeBrilliance - ''PrivateEye'' ran a ''ComicStrip/DanDare'' parody in TheEighties where the Mekon represented UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher ("The Maggon") and Tony Blair was often accused of selling out Labour's principles to Thatcherism.

* ''PrivateEye'' started out with two Blair parodies: ''Blairzone'', referencing his "Cool Britannia" attempts to be hip and with it, and "The Vicar of St. Albion's", referencing how some had compared his speech-giving style to that of a sanctimonious parish [[TheVicar vicar]] preaching a sermon. Perhaps unexpectedly, it was the second one that lasted and became very popular, with Cabinet members fulfilling corresponding roles (for instance, UsefulNotes/GordonBrown as the church treasurer) and foreign leaders being slotted into appropriate roles (e.g. American Presidents UsefulNotes/BillClinton and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush were made into the leaders of odd evangelical sects the Church of the Seventh-Day Fornicators and the Church of the Latter Day Morons--or Morbombs during the Iraq War--respectively).

** Actually, ''PrivateEye'' adapted pretty well: he now makes occasional appearances as the Rev. Imam Rabbi Sri Tony Blair, Chief Executive of super-ecumenical organization [[FunWithAcronyms Drawing All Faiths Together]].

* Played by MichaelSheen in 2006's ''Film/TheQueen'', who previously played him in 2003's ''TheDeal'' and again in 2010's ''The Special Relationship''. Screenwriter Peter Morgan seems to have a [[AuthorAppeal strong interest]] in what Blair is like behind closed doors.

Despite criticism (most notably for shifting the Labour party massively to the right and for invading Iraq), he captained Labour through three consecutive victories and left by own choice in 2007 after seeing off four opposition leaders before handing over to [[UsefulNotes/GordonBrown the Chancellor]]. It goes without saying the switch from Captain Charisma to No-Flash Gordon has fuelled several jokes. Blair currently acts as a UN Peace Envoy to the Middle East, something that confuses just about everyone. His premiership also saw a military intervention which ended the Sierra Leone Civil War - and, to this day, Sierra Leone is just about the only country with an unequivocally positive view of him. (UsefulNotes/{{Kosovo}} is the other, due to his staunch support for the 1999 NATO intervention.)

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Perhaps unusually, Mr. Blair wasn't from the South but in fact started out in UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} (he was born in Edinburgh[[note]]His ''ancestry'' is insanely complicated to explain, as his father was the bastard son of English actors adopted by a Glaswegian dockworker, and his mother was born in [[{{Oireland}} County Donegal]] to an Ulster Scots family, which had in recent generations shuttled between Glasgow (which was roughly where the family had migrated from centuries ago) and Ballyshannon several times. Whew.[[/note]]) and was educated in the English [[OopNorth North]] and Scotland. He became the Labour Party MP for Sedgefield (also OopNorth) and party leader in 1994. In 1997, he steamrollered JohnMajor's Conservatives and won Labour's first election victory in 18 years.