Blair to announce resignation: official
Last Updated: Thursday, May 10, 2007 | 6:25 AM ET
CBC News
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce Thursday he will step down after a decade in office, a Labour party official said.
Blair is expected to make the formal announcement in his northern England riding of Sedgefield, said John Burton, the prime minister's political representative in the area. The announcement is set for shortly before 7 a.m. ET.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, shown at a Public Service Reform conference in March, helped usher in a new peaceful era in Northern Ireland, but sent British troops to Iraq.
(Associated Press/Ian Nicholson) Earlier Thursday, Blair told his cabinet he plans to quit.
After leading the Labour party to its third straight election win in 2005, Blair said he would not seek a fourth term.
Blair has said he will stay as prime minister and Labour party leader for about seven weeks until his successor is chosen. Treasury chief Gordon Brown, Blair's friend-turned-rival, is expected to win the leadership contest and become the next prime minister.
The two have had an uneasy relationship in recent years as party members loyal to Brown have pushed for Blair's departure before Labour's annual fall conference leading up to the next election in 2009.
Blair's popularity in opinion polls has plummeted due to government scandals over mismanagement, and controversy over British military participation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Labour's bruising defeat last week in English municipal elections has been blamed on the party's increasing unpopularity over the Iraq war, while in Scotland, where Labour has won every election for the past 50 years, Blair's party lost the majority of seats to the independence-seeking Scottish National Party.
Conservative Leader David Cameron — himself compared to a youthful, vibrant Blair when the prime minister took office — grilled Blair in Parliament Wednesday, asking why a "government of the living dead" needed to remain in power for seven weeks.
Blair responded he needed the time to see through the government's economic, health and education policies.
Iraq decision could haunt Blair's legacy: observers
Amid a wave of optimism, Blair and his "New Labour" team took power in an overwhelming victory in 1997 after 18 uninterrupted years of Conservative rule.
Blair also displayed a remarkable instinct for understanding the public mood in the wake of the death of Princess Diana that same year, demonstrated in a speech he gave in which he re-crowned her "the people's princess."
Once in power, Blair's government oversaw a wide range of social reforms, including increased funding for the National Health Service and the public education system, as well as the introduction of the first minimum wage in British history.
Blair also delivered significant constitutional reform in the creation of provincial parliaments for Scotland and Wales, and the gradual reshaping of the House of Lords.
After almost three decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland, Blair successfully guided talks between warring Catholic and Protestant factions, which culminated in a peace agreement signed on Good Friday in 1998.
The resumption of power sharing in Northern Ireland this week is seen as Blair's crowning achievement during his stewardship.
But Blair's close alignment with the U.S. on foreign policy, especially over Iraq, has led critics as well as former cabinet members to question his legacy.
