Tony Blair became Britain's youngest prime minister in 185 years Friday after his Labor Party crushed John Major's Conservatives, who had had been in power for 18 years.
Major went to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II after announcing that he would also step down as leader of the Conservative Party, which suffered its worst defeat since 1832.After Major left the palace, Blair, 43, arrived in the official prime ministerial car to be confirmed - or "kiss hands" in the outdated language of court ceremony.
"For 18 years, 18 long years, our party has been in opposition," Blair declared outside 10 Downing St., standing in the sparkling sunshine to give his first speech as prime minister.
"It could only say it could not do. Today we are charged with the deep responsibility of government. Today enough of talking, it is time now to do."
Blair paid tribute to Major, praising his "dignity and his courage over these last few days and . . . the manner of his leaving, the essential decency of which is the manner of the man."
As the cheering died down, Blair hugged his wife, Cherie Booth, then posed for a photograph with their three children, Euan, 13, Nicholas, 12, and Kathryn, 9, before shepherding them inside.
With tearful staffers leaning out of the windows, Major left the same Downing Street residence for the last time today and stood on the doorstep, surrounded by his wife, Norma, and two children.
He told reporters that it had been "an immense privilege" to serve as prime minister for the past 61/2 years.
"The country is in far better shape than when I entered Downing Street," he said, expressing hope that Labor would maintain the country's strong economy.
Then he announced it was time to end his reign as party leader.
"When the curtain falls, it's time to get off the stage, and that is what I propose to do," he said.
With the brutal efficiency of British politics, the powerful lost their offices, their cars and chauffeurs within 12 hours of the first returns. As Major spoke, moving men were taking cartons out of the back door and loading them on a truck.
With final results in 628 races for 659 seats in the House of Commons, Labor had 44.8 percent of the vote and 417 seats. The party born in the mines, mills and docks of industrial Britain has become the darling of the middle class.
Blair will have a five-year term and an impregnable majority in the Commons to implement what he calls a "radical center" program.
The Conservatives lost more than half their districts and slumped to 160 seats with 31.4 percent of the vote.
Overshadowed in the landslide was a strong showing by the Liberal Democrats, who won 40 seats, nearly doubling their previous tally. It was the best election for the Liberals since they won 133 seats under David Lloyd George in 1918.
In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams reclaimed his west Belfast seat in Parliament, his popularity undimmed by Irish Republican Army violence.
Blair, like most of the people he will name as Cabinet ministers, has never held a government office.
Born in Edinburgh on May 6, 1953, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was educated at Durham Choristers, Fettes College in Edinburgh, known as the Eton of Scotland, and Oxford University, where he studied law.
His father, Leo, a law professor, suffered a stroke in 1964 at age 40 when Tony was 11. Leo Blair worked three years to recover his ability to speak.
The illness, Tony says, was a formative moment in his life.
His mother, Hazel, died of throat cancer in 1975, just after Blair graduated from Oxford.
The discipline over himself and his party that he was to display in later years was evident even then. He confined his rebelliousness to growing his hair long, wearing 1970s fashions and singing in a rock band called Ugly Rumors.
His biographer, John Rentoul, says he was "discreet about sex, abstemious about drugs and earnest about rock 'n' roll." A male acquaintance once said he was the kind of person who you'd suspect might press his jeans.
Before Oxford, Blair spent a year in London, where he drove a van, moved equipment for musical groups, worked in the basement of a department store and slept on the sofas of friends.
At Oxford, Blair became acquainted with Peter Thomson, an Anglican priest from Australia who led long conversations about theology, politics and the idea of community. Blair joined the Church of England at Oxford and has identified himself as a Christian socialist.
Blair did not thrust religion into the campaign, but a year ago he told The Daily Telegraph about the influence of faith on his politics.
"My view of Christian values led me to oppose what I perceived to be the narrow view of self-interest that Conservatism - particularly its modern, more right-wing form - represents. But Tories, I think, have too selfish a definition of self-interest. They fail to look beyond to the community and the individual's relationship with the community."