On May 2 1997 the New Labour government under the leadership of Tony Blair secured a monumental landslide victory: a Commons majority of 179 seats (419 Labour; just 165 Conservative seats — their worst performance since 1906), and a wave of popular excitement buoyed the new 43-year-old prime minister. Yet, not one member of the new Blair administration had served in cabinet and only one had served in a previous Labour government. Neither Blair nor his formidable friend and colleague, the new chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown, had experience that went beyond their work in the shadow cabinet.
Blair had studied previous Labour governments and was determined to lead the New Labour government in a different manner from James Callaghan’s leadership of the last Labour government (1976–79). As Blair explained:
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