Tony Blair's victory speech

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Tony Blair's victory speech

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, Friday 8 June 2001 18.48 BST

I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, from my audience with the Queen.

I want to say what an enormous privilege and honour it is to be trusted with the government of this country and I am deeply conscious of that privilege and honour at this time.

I would like to congratulate all the MPs from whatever political party who have been elected to the House of Commons.

I would like also to say this word about my opponent in the election, Mr Hague.

Even though obviously I profoundly disagreed with many of the things he may have said during the course of this campaign, I thought he showed extraordinary stoicism and resilience in very difficult circumstances and I said to him in the early hours of this morning I wish him well, I wish him the very best of luck in the future.

It has been a remarkable and historic victory for my party but I am in no doubt at all as to what it means.

It is a mandate for reform and for investment in the future and it is also very clearly an instruction to deliver.

I have learnt many things over the past four years as prime minister. I have, I hope, learnt from the mistakes as well as the good things.

But above all else I have learnt of the importance of establishing the clear priorities of government, of setting them out clearly for people and then focusing on them relentlessly whatever events may come and go.

I believe there is an even greater obligation on us, on me, after re-election to tell people very clearly what are the difficult choices and challenges we face and how we work our way through them and that I will try to do.

So in the course of the campaign we have just had, I set out in a series of speeches the changes that I believe the country needs to see.

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