Why take Blair’s tainted money?

Tony Blair’s pledge of £1,000 to each of the 106 candidates in Labour’s main battleground seats has stirred controversy.

It didn't take long for Tony Blair's pledge of £1,000 to each of the 106 candidates in Labour's main battleground seats to stir controversy, says Jim Pickard in the Financial Times.

While a spokesman said the party was "delighted" with the backing, the reality is that their former leader's "jet-setting lifestyle is at odds with Labour's increasingly leftwing... campaign... focusing on voters' cost of living crisis'". So far two candidates have refused the money. Alistair Campbell, Blair's former-spin doctor, responded by accusing them of "attention-seeking".

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.