orig. Anthony Charles Lynton
born May 6, 1953, Edinburgh, Scot.
British politician who in 1997 became the country's youngest prime minister since 1812.
Blair was a lawyer before winning election to the House of Labour Party in 1988 at age 35, Blair urged the party to move to the political centre and deemphasize its traditional advocacy of state control and public ownership of certain sectors of the economy. He assumed leadership of Labour in 1994 and revamped its platform. He led the party to landslide victories in the 1997 and 2001 elections. His government brokered a peace agreement between unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland, introduced devolved assemblies in Wales and Scotland, and carried out reforms of Parliament. After the September 11 attacks on the U.S. in 2001, Blair allied the United Kingdom with the U.S. and its president, {{link=Bush, George Walker">George W. Bush , in a global war against terrorism. In late 2002 Blair and Bush accused the Iraqi government of Saddām Hussein of continuing to possess and develop biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in violation of UN mandates. They subsequently tried without success to persuade France, Russia, and other UN Security Council members that such weapons would not be uncovered by UN weapons inspections, which were then under way. Despite deep divisions within his own party and strong public opposition to a war with Iraq, Blair, with Bush, led an attack on Iraq that toppled Ḥussein's regime in March–April 2003.