Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. On his resignation he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015. He has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016. As prime minister, many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the only living former Labour leader to have led the party to a general election victory and one of only two in history, the other being Harold Wilson, to form three majority governments.
Blair was born in Edinburgh; his father, Leo, was a barrister and academic. After attending the independent school Fettes College, he studied law at St John's College, Oxford, and became a barrister. He became involved in Labour politics and was elected Member of Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983. He supported moving the party to the centre of British politics in an attempt to help it win power. He was appointed to the party's frontbench in 1988 and became Shadow Home Secretary in 1992.