Flashback: Tony Blair storms to victory in 2001 General Election

Or should we call them non-voters, as the turnout was a record low for modern times. Only 59 per cent of those entitled to vote did so. In the 1997 general election the turnout had been 71 per cent - which was itself the lowest since the Second World War.

It posed real questions about how engaged people, and especially young people, were with the business of politics.

Lowest turnout of all was 57 per cent in 1918, in the special circumstances created by the end of the Great War.

One factor in keeping voters away from the polling booths in 2001 may have been that the issue was never in serious doubt. Labour had a huge Parliamentary majority and, from the voters' point of view, the Tories were still well short of completing the "sentence" which had been imposed on them by the electorate in 1997.

Opinion polls all pointed to Labour gaining a large victory and there was no real shift in them during the campaign.

The result was another Labour landslide and more demoralisation for the Tories, who were led by William Hague, who was a highly effective speaker in the Commons, but suffered from something that had dogged Tory leaders for years - splits in the party, particularly over Europe.

Labour won 413 seats with 43 per cent of the vote, the Tories ended up with 166 seats (33 per cent), and the Lib Dems, 52 seats (19 per cent).

It was another great triumph for Tony Blair and the New Labour project. His term of office since 1997 - he was the youngest Prime Minister for nearly 200 years - had been nothing if not eventful, with one of the early challenges being the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in August of that year.

Blair caught the public mood and articulated the grief of the nation, famously calling her "the people's princess".

Blair had been dubbed Bambi by some in the press before taking office, but it was not a nickname that stuck when he came into power. Indeed, he proved to be not averse to military operations, and pioneered the concept of a "humanitarian war" when Nato embarked on a sustained bombing campaign in 1999 of Serbia and of Serbian targets in Kosovo.

Less high profile was a go-it-alone British military intervention in 2000 during a savage civil war in Sierra Leone. It was a success which brought an end to the conflict and made Blair a hero in that country.

There was a dose of feelgood factor with his tenure coinciding with the advent of the new millennium. There were celebrations, partying, and events across the world as 1999 turned into 2000. Less happily the millennium year saw major flooding in the autumn, with Shrewsbury among those places which were particularly hard hit. Mr Blair came to the emergency control room in the county town in November, and his deputy John Prescott made visits in both November and in December when there was renewed severe flooding.

As if that did not hit Shropshire hard enough, there was a crisis for the agricultural industry which began in February 2001 when there was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Essex. Within a week it had been detected at a farm at Felindre, near Clun. The Shropshire and Mid Wales countryside became a virtual no-go zone, with footpaths closed and tracts of land out of bounds to the public. By the end of the outbreak almost 60,000 animals in Shropshire had been destroyed.

Tony Blair did have a Shropshire connection as his father Leo lived in Shrewsbury, who as it happened had been a long-time Conservative who had even thought of becoming a Tory MP at one stage. However he joined his local Labour branch in Monkmoor at the age of 71 in the mid-1990s, explaining his decision as 80 per cent paternal pride in his son, and 20 per cent disillusionment with the Conservative party.

With this being our last dip into our archives to recall past elections, we should briefly fast forward to 2005 when Tony Blair won again after yet another eventful term of office, which included the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, in America, and military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan which followed.

It was the first time Labour had won three consecutive terms of office.

Say what you like about Tony Blair, but he was a winner.