What's so wrong with Tony Blair's money?

The former Prime Minister is offering £106,000 to help Labour campaign in its 106 target seats.

Labour sends out begging emails every few days.

This week it even resorted to one signed by David Cameron saying how much he loved Labour.

The joke was that it wasn't the David Cameron in Number 10 but a Scottish supporter with the same name.

Oh, the hilarity.

I can imagine the walls of Brewers Green positively shaking at that one.

But back to Blair and his campaign funds.

UKIP's James Carver calls Tony Blair an 'embarrassment' and reminds everyone that he was the Prime Minister that took us into Iraq and Afghanistan.

He says the donations should have been refused.

He also calls it the 'Blair rich project', which means unless he thought of that one himself there's a spin doctor working for him somewhere who is clearly earning his crust.

Labour probably doesn't need to pay too much heed to its opponents on this though. After all, that's what opponents do. They oppose stuff.

Where it does need to do a bit of soul searching is among its own members.

The six constituency Labour parties around here to whom Mr Blair is handing his money - Cannock Chase, Dudley South, Stourbridge, Stafford, Halesowen and Rowley Regis and Wolverhampton South West - are all grateful.

After all, Mr Blair is the leader that secured three election victories in a row.

Even the 2005 one was a majority of 66 seats. David Cameron and Ed Miliband would probably consider 10 a great result in May.

It is also more than Mr Blair needed to do for Labour. He's making millions on the world stage and hardly needs to give two hoots about his old party now.

Indeed, to listen to some party members talk about him, you'd think he was the one who had made Labour unelectable in the 1980s.

Yet for all the things people did not like about him in the end, Labour are within touching distance of returning to government after just a single term in opposition.

Some candidates such as the one in Dundee who rejected the money, however, might feel hypocritical for accepting it if they opposed Mr Blair on Iraq.

And while the £1,000 offered will undoubtedly come in useful for leaflets and other campaign material, the big dilemma is whether it is going to be more hindrance than help.

For if Tony Blair is a divisive figure within Labour, he is even more so to the electorate the party has to win over.

And that's a rather ironic coda for the political career of a man whose pinnacle was in uniting both left and right wing voters behind him.

Time to prove there's no need to be made to vote

We won't see any progress before the election on David Winnick's proposals to make it a 'civic obligation' to turn out to to vote. It's scheduled for a second reading on the very last day before Parliament is dissolved.

Personally I hope that the election, close as it is going to be, will see a spike in the number of people actually using their right rather than needing the small fine that Walsall North MP Mr Winnick proposes as an incentive.

With the opinion polls so close and the smaller parties in the limelight too, if each voter does not feel the hand of history on their shoulder this time, they never will. 'Hand of history'? Where have I heard that before?