Tony Blair general election defeats) the Labour Party had to demonstrate that it had made a decisive break from its left-wing past, in order to win an election again. In May 1997, the Labour Party won a landslide general election victory, the largest in its history. Blair, at 43 years of age, became the youngest Prime Minister since 1812. In September 1997, Blair attained early personal popularity, receiving a 93% public approval rating, after his public response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The Labour Party went on to win two more general elections under his leadership: in 2001, in
British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War and that the only alternative was continued civil war. A military intervention by the United Kingdom in 1999 was ruled out as the British government had received no request for military assistance and felt it lacked the backing of the international community for a unilateral intervention. An intervention was also deemed to be politically and militarily impractical given the British military's involvement with NATO operations in Yugoslavia. The intervention in Sierra Leone was the fourth expeditionary operation and the second significant deployment undertaken by Her Majesty's Armed Forces under Tony Blair, who was elected as Prime Minister in 1997. The