No British prime minister has dominated the landscape so obviously, with so little obvious effort or for so long, as Tony Blair. You can check through the lists fruitlessly as far back as they go to find a comparable example. Maybe Palmerston, who attained power only in ripe old age, enjoyed a comparable period of popularity during the high Victorian epoch, but even that assertion is open to debate.
Before the emergence of Tony Blair, certain rules were assumed to be immutable. It was axiomatic that governments, in-between general elections, faded in the polls. It was taken for granted that the Conservative party was a formidable electoral machine, but within a two-party system. All of these doctrines – the mid-term unpopularity of governments, the inevitability of the Conservative party recovery, the two-party system – have been disproved by Tony Blair. He has established what amounts for the time being to a one-party state. New Labour in power has generated both government (No. 10) and opposition (Gordon Brown and his coterie).
When he was elected Prime Minister in 1997 at the age of 43, Tony Blair was the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. Even now, approaching the veteran stage after nearly six years in office, he remains the fourth youngest member of his Cabinet (he is a few months older than Alistair Darling and Geoff Hoon, while Alan Milburn, at just 44, is the baby of the Cabinet). He is the first prime minister since Russell 150 years ago to father a legitimate child while in Downing Street, and the first Labour prime minister ever to lead his party towards two successive full terms of office.
After six years most prime ministers become arrogant, tired, out of touch.
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