Leader of the Labour Party (UK) in the context of "Tony Blair"

The Labour Party, commonly Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum, and has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. It has been the governing party since the 2024 general election. Keir Starmer has been Leader of the Labour Party since 2020 and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024. There have been twelve Labour governments and seven Labour prime ministers.

The Labour Party was founded in 1900, having emerged from the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It was electorally weak before the First World War, but in the early 1920s overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party, and briefly formed a minority government under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. In 1929 Labour for the first time became the largest party in the House of Commons, with 287 seats, but fell short of a majority, forming another minority government. In 1931, in response to the Great Depression, MacDonald formed a new government with Conservative and Liberal support, which led to his expulsion from the party. Labour was soundly defeated by his coalition in 1931, winning only 52 seats, but began to recover in 1935 with 154 seats.

Kenneth Robert Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is an English politician who served as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until the council was abolished in 1986, and as the first mayor of London from the creation of the office in 2000 until 2008. He also served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent East from 1987 to 2001. He is a former member of the Labour Party, ideologically identifying as a socialist.

Born in Lambeth, South London, to a working-class family, Livingstone joined Labour in 1968 and was elected to represent Norwood at the GLC in 1973, Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1977, and Paddington in 1981. That year, Labour representatives on the GLC elected him as the council's leader. Attempting to reduce London Underground fares, his plans were challenged in court and declared unlawful; more successful were his schemes to benefit women and several minority groups, despite stiff opposition. The mainstream press gave him the moniker "Red Ken" in reference to his socialist beliefs and criticised him for supporting republicanism, LGBT rights, and a United Ireland. Livingstone was a vocal opponent of the Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which in 1986 abolished the GLC. Elected as MP for Brent East in 1987, he became closely associated with anti-racist campaigns. He attempted to stand for the position of Labour Party leader following Neil Kinnock's resignation in 1992, but failed to get enough nominations. Livingstone became a vocal critic of Tony Blair's New Labour project that pushed the party closer to the political centre and won the 1997 general election.

Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff (/ˈkæləhæn/ KAL-ə-han; 27 March 1912 – 26 March 2005), was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980. Callaghan is the only person to have held all four Great Offices of State, having also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1964 to 1967, Home Secretary from 1967 to 1970 and Foreign Secretary from 1974 to 1976. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1987.

Born into a working-class family in Portsmouth, Callaghan left school early and began his career as a tax inspector, before becoming a trade union official in the 1930s. He served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He was elected to Parliament at the 1945 election, and was then regarded as being on the left wing of the Labour Party. He was appointed to the Attlee government as a parliamentary secretary in 1947, and began to move increasingly towards the right wing of the Labour Party, while maintaining his reputation as a "Keeper of the Cloth Cap" – that is, seen as maintaining close ties between Labour and the trade unions. Following Labour's defeat at the 1951 election, Callaghan increasingly became regarded as a leader of the right wing of the Labour Party, and stood for the positions of deputy leader in 1960 and for leader in 1963, but was defeated by George Brown for the former and Harold Wilson for the latter.

Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and lawyer who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024 and as Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 2020 to 2024. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015, and was Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.

Born in Southwark, London, and raised in Surrey, Starmer was politically active as a teenager, and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Leeds in 1985 and received a postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law degree from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1986. After being called to the Bar, Starmer worked predominantly in criminal defence, specialising in human rights. He served as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, taking silk as a Queen's Counsel in 2002. During his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he handled a number of major cases, including the Stephen Lawrence murder case. In the 2014 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) for services to law and criminal justice.

Tribune is a democratic socialist political magazine founded in 1937 and published in London, initially as a newspaper, then converting to a magazine in 2001. While it is independent, it has usually supported the Labour Party from the left. Previous editors at the magazine have included Aneurin Bevan, the minister of health who spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service, former Labour leader Michael Foot, and writer George Orwell, who served as literary editor.

From 2008 it faced serious financial difficulties until it was purchased by Jacobin in late 2018, shifting to a quarterly publication model. Since its relaunch the number of paying subscribers has passed 15,000, with columns from high-profile socialist politicians such as former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, former Second Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Pablo Iglesias and former Bolivian President Evo Morales. In January 2020, it was used as the platform on which Rebecca Long-Bailey chose to launch her Labour leadership campaign.

James Ramsay MacDonald (né James McDonald Ramsay; 12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British statesman and politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The first two of his governments belonged to the Labour Party, where he led a minority Labour government for nine months in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931. In 1931, MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party, after he formed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members, his premiership of which lasted until 1935.

MacDonald, along with Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, was one of the three principal founders of the Labour Party in 1900. He was chairman of the Labour MPs before 1914 and, after an eclipse in his career caused by his opposition to the First World War, he was Leader of the Labour Party from 1922. The second Labour Government (1929–1931) was dominated by the Great Depression. He formed the National Government to carry out spending cuts to defend the gold standard, but it had to be abandoned after the Invergordon Mutiny, and he called a general election in 1931 seeking a "doctor's mandate" to fix the economy.

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx (11 March 1916 – c. 23 May 1995), was a British politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1964 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1976. He was Leader of the Labour Party from 1963 to 1976, Leader of the Opposition twice from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1970 to 1974, and a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1983. Wilson is the only Labour leader to have formed governments following four general elections.

Born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, to a politically active lower middle-class family, Wilson studied philosophy, politics and economics at Jesus College, Oxford. He was later an Economic History lecturer at New College, Oxford, and a research fellow at University College, Oxford. Elected to Parliament in 1945, Wilson was appointed to the Attlee government as a Parliamentary secretary; he became Secretary for Overseas Trade in 1947, and was elevated to the Cabinet shortly thereafter as President of the Board of Trade. Following Labour's defeat at the 1955 election, Wilson joined the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Chancellor, and was moved to the role of Shadow Foreign Secretary in 1961. When Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell died in January 1963, Wilson won the leadership election to replace him, becoming Leader of the Opposition.

James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. Previously, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007 under Tony Blair. Brown was Member of Parliament (MP) for Dunfermline East from 1983 to 2005 and for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath from 2005 to 2015. He has served as United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education since 2012, and he was appointed as World Health Organization Ambassador for Global Health Financing in 2021.

A doctoral graduate, Brown studied history at the University of Edinburgh. He spent his early career as a lecturer at a further education college and as a television journalist. Brown was elected to the House of Commons at the 1983 general election as the MP for Dunfermline East. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet in 1989 and was named Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer by John Smith in 1992. Following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election, Brown was appointed as chancellor, becoming the longest-serving in modern history. Brown's time as chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting to the Bank of England, extending the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy, and transferring banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Brown presided over the longest period of economic growth in British history. He outlined five economic tests, which resisted the UK adopting the euro. Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, the sale of UK gold reserves from 1999 to 2002, and the removal in his final budget of the 10% starting rate of income tax that he had introduced in the 1999 budget.