British Prime Minister Blair to Step Down Soon

Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he will quit on June 27 of this year. He has served for 10 years. Britain under him was considered as a new dawn, but has been darkened by the Iraq war.

Blair admitted that he feels that 10 years is long enough not only for him but also for the country. He said that "the only way to conquer the pull of power is to set it down."

He became the leader of the British Labour Party in July 1994, after the death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under Blair's leadership, the party abandoned many policy goals, a lot of them even decades-old. In the 1997 election, Labour won with a landslide victory. This victory ended an 18-year rule of the Conservative Party.

His rule threw away the Thatcherite legacy. His government introduced progressive laws regarding the minimum wage, human rights and the Great London Council. He allowed civil partnership for same sex couples. Under his rule, Scotland and Wales were granted more autonomy. But many did not like his governance. They felt that that gap between the rich and poor was wider, compared to Thatcher's time.

Blair is considered to be the longest-serving prime minister of their party. He was also the only person to have led Labour party to three consecutive general election victories. Furthermore, he was the only Labour prime minister to serve more than one full consecutive term.

The Prime Minister will be remembered for his efforts in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. Decades of violence ruled Northern Ireland. But he is also known to be the US president's closest ally over Iraq. Many are against sending British forces to join the US troops who have been in war against Iraq since 2003. Since his ties with the US grew stronger and the war in Iraq got worse, his popularity took a nosedive.

Blair was born to Leo and Hazel Blair in May 6, 1953. He has one elder brother, William and a younger sister, Sarah. The Blairs lived in Willowbrae area of Edinburgh when Tony was born, but later moved to Adelaide, Australia where his father worked as a lecturer in law at the University of Adelaide. In the late 1950s, the family returned to Britain.

He attended Chorister School, then Fettes College. He reportedly modeled himself on the famous rock star Mick Jagger, and is said to have enjoyed a reputation of being a "cool young man" among his fellow students. His teachers, however, did not like his behavior and considered him a "complete pain in the backside". There was an incident of arrest after having been mistaken for a burglar after he climbed into his dormitory using a ladder.

After Fettes, Blair spent a year in London and even tried his luck as a rock music promoter. Later, he moved to Oxford University where he tried to juggle the role of a student and that of a band member. He was part of the group Ugly Rumours, and played the guitar and did some vocals for the band.

After graduating from Oxford, he became a member of Lincoln's Inn and enrolled as a pupil barrister( this is something similar to an apprentice where students try to learn from and combine experience with what they have learned from the Bar Vocational Course). His lawyer friends said that he was much less concerned about which party he was affiliated with than about his aim of becoming prime minister.

Blair married Cherie Booth and have four children.

An opinion poll published by the Guardian newspaper showed that 60 per cent of voters believed Blair would be remembered as "a force for change, though not always good." Another 44 percent believed he had been good for Britain.

Treasury chief Gordon Brown, Blair's partner in reforming the Labour party, and sometimes considered a rival in the government, was expected to be elected as the party's new leader and become the next prime minister.