A 19-year-old Oxford student who modeled himself on Mick Jagger, played guitar in a band called Ugly Rumours, and worked as a rock promoter somehow became the youngest British prime minister of the 20th century. It sounds like a Hollywood script, but it's the real trajectory of one of modern Europe's most consequential and polarizing leaders.

This deep dive uses the lens of a corporate turnaround CEO to unpack how Tony Blair rescued a bankrupt Labour Party, rebranded it as New Labour, and delivered a historic landslide, only to fracture his legacy with the Iraq War. We trace his journey from a Trotsky-reading youth to Downing Street and examine the mechanisms behind his rise and fall.

• His early Marxist phase and the personal tragedy that reshaped his politics toward pragmatism
• The legendary Granita Pact that carved up pow ...