Tony Blair's recent announcement that he is to step down as Britain's prime minister on June 27 took few people by surprise. Soon after his third electoral victory in 2005 the media continuously hounded Mr Blair to announce when he was going to hand over to his successor.

Supporters of Gordon Brown within the government were also exerting pressure on the prime minister to call it a day. Last year Mr Blair, who always said that he would not go for a fourth term in office, announced that he would step down within a year.

Now that Mr Blair is going after 10 years in office - a marvellous record for a Labour prime minister - how will history judge his legacy? Mr Blair leaves office with rather poor approval ratings in the opinion polls (mainly due to Iraq) and after his Labour Party did badly in the English local elections, and the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly on May 3.

However, this does not mean that, overall, the last 10 years have not been beneficial for Britain. One has to look at the wider picture of the last decade and not allow one's judgment to be clouded by an unpopular war. I am quite certain that history will judge Mr Blair's legacy in a generally positive manner.

He managed to win three consecutive general elections - something the Labour Party would have never imagined possible in the past - by moving the part firmly in the centre of the political spectrum.

Mr Blair's charisma and excellent communications skills, coupled with the fact that the opposition Conservative Party - before David Cameron took over - remained firmly on the right and had a string of leaders who could not match his charm and personal appeal, obviously helped the Prime Minister at election time.

Winning elections, of course, is only part of his legacy. How did he actually perform in government and what are his greatest achievements? Mr Blair understood that the British people wanted to keep most of Mrs Thatcher's crucial economic reforms but also wanted a greater emphasis on social justice, investment in public services and a more modern Britain.

There has been uninterrupted economic growth since 1997, unemployment has been greatly reduced and inflation kept low. This is certainly a proud economic record to have, even though perhaps Mr Blair's Conservative predecessors don't get enough credit for having laid the foundations for this remarkable economic growth to take place.

Most observers believe that Britons are almost certainly better off than they were 10 years ago, even though there have been a number of indirect tax increases introduced by Mr Blair's government.

More Britons are going to university than ever before and the introduction of the minimum wage, the adoption of the EU's social chapter and tax credits for poor working families certainly ensured a degree of social justice.

Under Mr Blair Britain has certainly become more cosmopolitan, modern and tolerant. The country got its first Human Rights Act and the House of Lords was reformed. The Bank of England was given its independence, and Scotland and Wales got more autonomy with the setting up of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

The recent power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants is certainly a huge achievement for Mr Blair after many years of patient negotiations, which, to be fair, had begun under previous Conservative governments.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mr Blair presided over the end of hostilities in Northern Ireland, and that is a huge feather in his cap.

Britain under Mr Blair managed to embrace globalisation, not fear it, and the result has been an unprecedented level of foreign investment pouring into Britain, which remains one of the most open economies in the world.

Mr Blair's decision, for example, to give citizens from the 10 new EU member states the right to work in Britain has been largely successful, making Britain more international in outlook, contributing to economic growth and not causing any job losses.

On the issue of public services, especially with regard to health and education, Mr Blair's record has been mixed. There have been some improvements in schools and hospitals and there has been much more investment in these sectors, but it is probably correct to say that people's expectations have not been fulfilled.

Little was achieved during Mr Blair's first term of office in this area and in his second term some progress was made - the government resorted to using competition and market-friendly measures to improve the quality of the service, which is what the Conservatives had started doing when they were in government before 1997.

On the whole, however, even though a lot of public money was invested in health and education, one cannot say that Mr Blair's legacy in this sector has been particularly positive.

On Europe, there is no doubt at all that under Mr Blair Britain has moved closer to the European Union and is no longer on the fringes of the EU when it comes to major policy issues.

This is certainly good for Britain and Mr Blair has contributed a lot to the debate in Brussels over just how the union should look to the future, deal with globalisation and reform itself.

Mr Blair is well respected within the EU by leaders of both centre-right and centre-left governments and it is no exaggeration to say that he has greatly helped shape the EU's agenda over the past decade.

Mr Blair's foreign policy legacy is also mixed. Naturally, the fiasco in Iraq will probably overshadow his record - unless things start to improve - but Mr Blair's track record includes many success stories.

Together with the US and other Nato allies, Mr Blair managed to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo through the use of military force. In Sierra Leone British troops managed to keep the peace and help stop the conflict.

In Afghanistan Mr Blair did the right thing to send troops to overthrow the Taliban, even though today the conflict is far from over. Mr Blair also focused a lot of his time on climate change and helping Africa. Consequently, he managed to place these important issues on the international agenda, especially within fora, such as the G8 and the EU.

Mr Blair's close relationship with US President George W. Bush and Britain's involvement in the Iraq war has come under a lot of criticism, and this is certainly understandable. I have no doubt that Mr Blair believed at the time that Saddam Hussein did possess weapons of mass destruction and that he acted in what he believed was Britain's interest.

However, this does not absolve him from the fact that there were no such weapons. Furthermore, the handling of the aftermath of the war was absolutely hopeless and Mr Blair should have insisted on proper post-war planning.

As for his influence over Mr Bush, this is certainly debatable. It seems clear, for example, that Mr Blair failed to persuade the US President to adopt a more balanced approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to press harder for a two-state solution and to exert more pressure on Israel.

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