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Blair to stand down on June 27
Level 1
Elementary
Key words
1
Find the information
2
Look in the text and find this information as quickly as possible.
1. How long has Tony Blair been British prime minister?
2. How long has he been leader of the British Labour Party?
3. When did he become prime minister?
4. How old is he?
5. How many general elections has he won?
6. Who will be the next UK prime minister?
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Blair to stand down on June 27 
Matthew Tempest 
May 10, 2007
 
British prime minister Tony Blair has announced 
he is leaving his job after 10 years as prime 
minister and 13 as Labour leader. The prime 
minister told a crowd of supporters he would 
stop being prime minister on June 27. He said 
the people would decide if his time as prime 
minister had been a success or not. Mr Blair 
praised his wife and children “who never let me 
forget my mistakes”. But he said: “Hand on heart, 
I did what I thought was right. Maybe I made 
mistakes – that’s for you to decide. But I did what 
I thought was right for our country. “This country 
is a special country. The British are special. The 
world knows it, we know it. This is the greatest 
country in the world.” 
He spoke directly about Iraq, which many people 
believe was a terrible mistake. “The criticism 
since the decision to go to war ... has been very 
strong and it has never stopped,” he said. But 
he added: “If we give up now, the terrorists will 
never give up.” Lindsey German, of the Stop the 
War coalition, said: “We cannot let this day pass 
without reminding people what Tony Blair did in 
going to war in Iraq, but this is about the future 
as well. 
Mr Blair’s Labour Party defeated the 
Conservative Party in a general election in 
May 1997. When Labour won after 18 years of 
Conservative rule, perhaps “people expected 
too much.” But he added: “I would not want it 
any other way. I was, and I still am, an optimist.” 
He then mentioned Africa, climate change and 
globalization and said that Britain had changed 
during his 10 years as prime minister: “Britain 
is not a follower, Britain is a leader,” he said. 
Mr Blair said that as prime minister, you had to 
make decisions over problems like Sierra Leone, 
Kosovo and then Afghanistan and Iraq. He did 
not say if he would stay in parliament as an MP 
or not.
Earlier in the day, the PM told senior members 
of his government that he was going to tell 
the people that he was going to leave his job, 
joking it was “not quite a normal day”. Then he 
flew to the north-east of England. Meanwhile 
in the House of Commons, Gordon Brown, the 
man who will be the next prime minister, was 
answering questions about the economy. “There 
are 600,000 job vacancies in the economy – and 
there’s one more today,” he joked. 
Mr Blair is 54 years old and his plans for the 
future are not yet clear. People have already 
begun to praise him for what he did while he was 
prime minister. Former US secretary of state 
Colin Powell said Mr Blair had “an enormous 
influence on world politics, and he certainly 
has had an enormous influence on the special 
relationship between the United States and Great 
Britain. He has been a friend and he has been 
strong in the face of negative public opinion and 
during crises.” 
Mr Blair was unique among Labour leaders in 
winning three general elections, one after the 
other. Although he announced before the 2005 
election that he would serve a “full third term”, 
pressure from Labour MPs last autumn forced 
him to say he would leave the job within a year. 
Now he has finally made that decision.