Less than a week after Guido ramped up the pressure on £20 million-a-year Tony Blair over his unpaid interns, the former PM has conceded defeat and agreed to give them the minimum wage.

“Over the past 5 years the Office of Tony Blair has had a small number of voluntary interns gaining work experience in the organisation. The vast majority came to us at their request, unadvertised, for voluntary work. Of those, a number have since become full-time paid employees with us. We have also always acted on legal advice in respect of any intern. 

Nonetheless from now on, if we do have interns for an extended period, i.e. around 3 months, we will pay them the National Minimum Wage.”

Credit should also be given to Graduate Fog, who first uncovered Tony’s minimum wage hypocrisy. HMRC sniffing around might also have had something to do with it…