Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, has died aged 72.
His death was confirmed on Friday by Christ Church college, University of Oxford, where Blair studied English and later became an honorary student.
A spokesman said: “The Christ Church community would like to extend its condolences to the family of Ian Blair, the Lord Blair of Boughton QPM, who has died at the age of 72.”
Born in Chester in 1953, Blair joined the Met in 1974 as part of its graduate entry scheme. He eventually moved to Thames Valley police as Assistant Chief Constable before returning to London in 2000 to take up the position of deputy commissioner.
After succeeding Sir John Stevens, Blair led Britain’s biggest force for three years from February 2005, including during the 7 July terrorism attacks in London that year which killed 52 people.
He resigned in 2008 after losing the support of the then-mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
In his resignation letter, Blair said: “It has been the proudest task of my life to lead the men and women of the Metropolitan police.
“It is the duty of the commissioner to lead the Met through good times and bad: To accept the burdens and pressures of office and, above all, to be a steward of the service he commands.”
Blair was lauded for making changes to the force but was criticised over the shooting of the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 shortly after the London bombings. Officers had mistaken him for a terrorism suspect at Stockwell tube station in south London.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission report into the shooting cleared Blair of personal wrongdoing but found the police operation had been marred by confusion and a lack of resources.
In a 2010 interview at the Hay festival, Blair said he “regrets” and was “accountable” for the shooting but he was “not responsible”.
In 2006, the commissioner was forced to apologise to the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, after saying “almost nobody” could understand why the disappearance of the girls, in August 2002 in Cambridgeshire, had dominated the news headlines and become “the biggest story in Britain”.
In 2010, the former Met commissioner was given a life peerage in the dissolution honours.
In an interview with the Guardian in 2009 about the end of his tenure at the Met, he said if he had been allowed to stay in post, he would have “served Boris and served him well”.
He added: “I did find a situation in which you effectively had to resign in public very difficult, and it wasn’t something I’d expected at all.”
Blair also said the Met had “a history of doing the best things in policing that have been done anywhere in the world, and a set of tragedies and horrors. That’s the nature of this great beast. I was very clear when I left the Met that the various things that were going on would pass, and they have.”
