Blair Receives Keys To 10 Downing St. Youngest British Prime Minister Since 1812 Moves Family In After Blowout Labor Victory

Cheered by flag-waving supporters and armed with the enormous power of an unshakeable parliamentary majority, Tony Blair became Britain’s first Labor Party prime minister in a generation Friday.

Before shepherding his three young children into the official residence at 10 Downing St., Blair promised to stick to a program of modest taxes and modest spending, with which he made Labor electable again.

“This isn’t a mandate for dogma or doctrine or a return to the past,” Blair, 43, declared after being invited by Queen Elizabeth II to form a government. “It is a mandate to get those things done in this country which desperately need doing.”

John Major said he will step down as Conservative leader after the catastrophic defeat in national elections Thursday that ended his party’s 18-year hold on power.

“When the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage,” Major said before going to Buckingham Palace to resign as prime minister. He then took his wife, Norma, and two adult children off to share his favorite hobby, watching cricket.

The ranks of challengers to take over the traumatized Conservatives, probably in a July contest, were depleted by the defeats of seven of Major’s Cabinet ministers. The party lost half its seats overall in its worst performance since 1832.

With the trappings of office stripped from defeated British leaders within hours, Blair returned to Downing Street in Major’s prime ministerial Jaguar.

Hundreds of supporters chanting “Tony, Tony, Tony” packed the short street in brilliant sunshine. Blair and his wife, Cherie, leaned over police barriers for handshakes, hugs and kisses.

The Blairs then led their children, Euan, 13, Nicholas, 11, and Kathryn, 9, through the black door and into the family’s new home.

Blair, the youngest prime minister since 1812, is the first to have young children in Downing Street since Labor’s Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s, aides said.

In Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army-allied Sinn Fein party made a historic breakthrough by winning two of the province’s 18 seats, including one for its leader Gerry Adams.

Major’s predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, who moved the British political agenda right, congratulated Blair - and noted he’d learned a thing or two from the Conservatives.

Lady Thatcher’s rigorous policies included emasculating the labor unions and selling off huge state-owned enterprises, including British Airways and British Telecom.

Asked if she thought her legacy was safe with Blair, Lady Thatcher told reporters outside her London office, “I shall have something to say if it isn’t.”

Blair inflicted the Conservatives’ heaviest defeat since 1832. Labor did even better than its 1945 landslide that swept Winston Churchill out of office right after World War II.

With races for all 659 seats in the House of Commons declared, Labor had 179 more seats than all other parties combined.

Labor finished with 419, the Conservatives wound up with 165, while the Liberal Democrats, buoyed by a tide of anti-Conservative voting, doubled their seats to 46. Welsh and Scottish nationalists had 10, and the rest were spread among small parties.