My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.

From the start of the War on Terror in 2001 Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of US President George W. In the first years of the New Labour government Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges introducing the minimum wage Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act and carrying out devolution establishing the Scottish Parliament the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly.