Tony Blair/Timelines

1983: Elected as Labour MP for Sedgefield, in general election won by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party.

1984 to 1987: New Labour party leader Neil Kinnock appoints Blair as Assistant Spokesman on Treasury matters. Blair aligns himself with the reformers within the party.

1987: Appointed Deputy spokesman for Trade and Industry.

October 1988: Elected as shadow secretary of state for energy.

1989 to 1992: Member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour party.

1992: Promoted to shadow Home Secretary by new Labour Leader John Smith. Blair pledges that his party would be tough on crime and on the causes of crime.

12 May, 1994 John Smith dies of a heart attack.

31 May, 1994 Tony Blair and and Gordon Brown meet at the Granita restaurant in Islington, London, and reportedly agree a deal about the leadership of the Labour Party.

1 June, 1994 Gordon Brown rules himself out of leadership race.

21 July, 1994 Tony Blair beats John Prescott and Margaret Beckett to become leader of the Labour Party.

October, 1994 Blair makes his first party conference speech as leader.

April, 1995 The Labour Party backs rewriting of Clause IV.

March, 1997 The Sun newspaper announces that it will back Blair at the general election.

1 May 1997: Labour wins the general election by a landslide (419 of 659 seats). At 44, Tony Blair becomes the second-youngest British prime minister.

Blair's Chancellor, Gordon Brown grants the Bank of England the freedom to set interest rates without consulting the government.

June Britain signs the European Union's "Social Chapter"

August Tony Blair reflects the mood of the nation on the death of Princess Diana calling her "the people's princess."

September A referendum in Scotland backs devolution; a referendum in Wales follows a week later, and also backs devolution, but only narrowly.

October Gordon Brown rules out the immediate prospects of Britain joining the euro setting five key economic tests that must first be met.

Blair meets Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

April 1998: Blair negotiates the Belfast Agreement ("The Good Friday Agreement") creating a power-sharing assembly in Northern Ireland.

May 1998: Referendum to create a new assembly for London and establish direct elections for mayor.

1998/1999: Britain, as part of NATO, joins in the Kosovo war. Britain keeps thousands of troops there as part of a peacekeeping force.

4 May, 2000 Labour rebel Ken Livingstone wins the first London Mayor election.

20 May, 2000 Leo Blair is born; the first child born to a sitting Prime Minister for more than 150 years.

June 2001: Labour wins another landslide general election, winning 413 of the 659 seats in the House of Commons, but the voter turnout is only 59 per cent. Conservative leader William Hague swifly resigns.

September 2001: After the Sept. 11 attacks on the USA, Blair emerges as the strongest ally of President Bush's administration, supporting its "war on terror." In October, British and American forces enter Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime and to weaken the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

13 September, 2001 Right winger Iain Duncan Smith beats Ken Clarke to replace William Hague as Conservative Party leader.

September 2002: Blair unveils an intelligence dossier, and claims that it shows that Iraq could deploy banned weapons "within 45 minutes".

Early 2003: Blair argues for the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, based mainly on his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. On 15 February, An estimated million people march through London to oppose war with Iraq.

March 16, 2003: Blair, Bush and Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar announce they will seek support for military action against Iraq.

March 19, 2003: Britain sends 45,000 troops and joins the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi regime falls after three weeks, and British troops remain in Iraq, mainly based around Basra in the south of the country.

July 2003: David Kelly, a biological warfare expert with the British Ministry of Defence, is found dead of an apparent suicide. Kelly was the unnamed source of a BBC report claiming the government had "sexed up" a dossier on illegal weapons in Iraq to boost public support for the invasion. In early July, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon had exposed Kelly as the source of the BBC report.

August 2003: An inquiry into Kelly's death and the circumstances leading up to it begins, led by Lord Hutton.

Jan. 28, 2004: The Hutton Report determines that Kelly took his own life, and that the BBC allegations were unfounded. The chairman and director-general of the BBC, and Andrew Gilligan, the journalist who made the allegations, all resign.

February 2004: Blair names a panel to conduct an inquiry into pre-war intelligence, led by Lord Butler.

July 2004: Butler's report criticises the intelligence basis for claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It says the assertion that Iraq could use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was unsubstantiated. However, the report found no evidence the intelligence had been manipulated by Blair and his aides.

April 5, 2005: Blair calls an election for May 5, 2005.

May 5, 2005: Becomes the first leader of the Labour party to win three consecutive terms as prime minister. The Labour Party defeats Michael Howard's Conservative Party comfortably, but with a much reduced majority overall.