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Blair now longest serving Labor PM

LONDON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Tony Blair has overtaken Harold Wilson to become the Labor Party's longest-serving prime minister in British history.

Since being elected May 1, 1997, Blair has achieved 2,839 days in office, and has done so in one continuous term. Blair has now surpassed the combined total of Wilson's two terms as prime minister, 1964-70 and 1974-76.

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Blair is only the fourth prime minister from the Labor Party after Ramsay Macdonald (1924-26 and 1929-31), Clement Attlee (1945-51) and Wilson, but by far the most successful in elections, winning two successive landslide victories. Opinion polls suggest Blair will win an unprecedented third general election this summer.

The formal British title for the job, dating from medieval times, is "Her Majesty's First Lord of the Treasury."

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