main index Narrative
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![]() The British LBJ Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Perhaps unusually, Mr. Blair wasn't from the South but in fact started out in Bonnie Scotland and was educated in the English North and Scotland. He became MP for Sedgefield (also Oop North) and fought off Tory John Major as Labour leader to become PM.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 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 envoy to the Middle East.His most enduring legacy is reinventing the traditionally blue-collar Labour Party into "New Labour", based around middle-class cubicle monkeys. 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 David Cameron, and made life quite difficult for Gordon Brown.Not afraid of media, Blair played himself in The Simpsons and a sketch with Catherine Tate. Likely the only Prime Minister to have said "Am I bovvered?".In British Media he tends to get portrayed either as a lapdog of George W. 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 Have I Got News for You once played a minute long speech by Tony, then played it again with "The extraneous material" removed, that 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, madlibs-style, in the media and to some extent have entered the British lexicon.Tony Blair in Fiction
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