Steerpike

This week Tony Blair donated £106,000 to the Labour Party, with £1,000 going to each Labour candidate fighting for a target seat. Ed Miliband has since faced flak for accepting the 'blood money' funds, due to unease over the source of the cash given Blair’s dealings with dictatorships such as Kazakhstan. Not that any of this is worrying Blair. Mr S hears that the former Labour leader has been busy sunning himself in Myanmar, where human rights are regarded as among the worst in the world. Blair, who has an estimated worth of nearly £100 million, was spied fine dining in the country's capital Naypyitaw. When a journalist inquired as to what he was doing there, they were told that he was in Burma for 'private meetings'.

Miriam Clegg said in a recent interview that she had banned her husband Nick Clegg from the kitchen on ‘health and safety grounds’. But happily, the leader of the Liberal Democrats can now have at least one dish to his name after spending a day making Cornish pasties as part of the St Piran's Day festivities with pupils at the St Merryn school in Cornwall. The new skill may come in useful in May should Clegg have to consider a new career path after the general election.

Tonight Norman Baker leads the Commons adjournment debate on international endangered species. Speaking ahead of the event, the Liberal Democrat MP explained to Politics Home why the subject is so close to his heart: 'I normally try to keep my day job, my role as MP, separate from my music, but this week I made an exception. I released a CD called Animal Countdown, and introduced a debate in the House of Commons, to highlight the threat of extinction hanging over so many wonderful species – rhinos, tigers, lions and even elephants, to name just a handful.' Surely Baker forgot to include the Liberal Democrats in his list of endangered species?

The Ukip spring conference was somewhat overshadowed by a publicity stunt from a local theatre group in Margate, which saw dancers dressed as Nazis high-kick their way through Springtime for Hitler to publicise their production of The Producers. Unsurprisingly, Nigel Farage's party were none too thrilled by the manoeuvre given the racism allegations that continue to haunt the party. Roger Helmer, the Ukip MEP, has tried to come to his party's aid in a blog post on his personal website. 'UKIP’s Party Conference in Margate on February 28th was gate-crashed by a group of dancers wearing Nazi Swastikas, and accompanied by a tank. They came from Mel Brooks’ Musical Show “The Producers”.

This week Sol Campbell was named as a bookies' favourite to be the next Tory candidate for Kensington after Sir Malcolm Rifkind stepped down following a cash for access scandal. While Rifkind's resignation has sparked a debate over whether MPs should be allowed to have second jobs, the former Arsenal footballer thinks there is a simple solution. When Mr S caught up with Campbell at the 6th anniversary Amos Bursary dinner at the House of Lords to raise funds to help African and Caribbean British young men realise their ambitions, Campbell said MP salaries should be increased to over £67,000. 'They should raise the salary, then you would have more diverse candidates,' he told Mr S.

While the Tories scrabble around for a candidate for the 2016 London Mayoral election, Mr S hears one millionaire is already eyeballing the 2020 race. Barely an edition of the Evening Standard fails to feature either an interview by (or with) their proprietor Evgeny Lebedev. His face is regularly found across the pages of both his publications the Standard and the Independent, most recently in an awkward interview with David Cameron. His father Alexander must have been proud, as he uploaded a photo of the two to Instagram: Evgueny recently interviewed D.Cameron.Hope a question about UK/Russia relations was raised.

Oh dear. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not going to be pleased. Natalie Rowe, the former dominatrix who enjoyed a friendship with George Osborne in the early nineties, is planning a book to follow her autobiography. Further still, judging by the fact she is toying with the idea of calling it 'Budge it' - a phrase that bares a close resemblance to 'budget' - it could well feature Osborne again. Mr S has blanked out one of the words to spare blushes. For those who missed her initial book Chief Whip: Memoirs of a Dominatrix, which was released in 2013, Rowe gave a colourful account of her friendship with Osborne, who she met through her ex-boyfriend William Sinclair. In the book, Rowe claimed that she once licked Osborne's ear.