page_title: Premiership of Tony Blair
section_title: Chancellorship of Gordon Brown (1997–2007)
hierarchical_section_title: Premiership of Tony Blair / Chancellorship of Gordon Brown (1997–2007)
caption_attribution_description: United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown at IMF Headquarters, Washington, DC.
context_page_description: The premiership of Tony Blair began on 2 May 1997 and ended upon his resignation on 27 June 2007. Whilst serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair concurrently served as the First Lord of the Treasury, the Minister for the Civil Service, the Leader of the Labour Party and the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield. He remains a Privy Counsellor, having first been appointed in July 1994 when he became Leader of the Opposition. Blair is the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister, the only Labour Prime Minister to have led the party to victory since 1974, and—having led the party to three consecutive general election victories—also the only Labour Prime Minister to serve two full consecutive terms. Blair is both credited with and criticised for moving the Labour Party closer to the centre of British politics, using the term "New Labour" to distinguish his pro-market policies from the more socialist policies which the party had espoused in the past.
  In domestic government policy, Blair significantly increased public spending on healthcare and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas.
context_section_description: Gordon Brown served as Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom from the Labour Party's 1997 general election victory on 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007, when elevated as Prime Minister. It was the second-longest continuous period of office of any Chancellor, surpassed only by Nicholas Vansittart two centuries before. Brown's time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy, and by largely benign economic conditions.
caption: Gordon Brown speaking at the annual World Bank/IMF meeting in 2002
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