So what's comical Tony up to now?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/carole-cadwalladr-tony-blair-unpaid-interns

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It's always a pleasure to see a familiar face again and when that face is Tony Blair's and it has reappeared beneath a banner headline that includes the words "multimillionaire", then you know it can be only one thing: time to sit back with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit for what will surely be another rich comedic treat.

What this time, Tony? More news about your hilarious comeback tour? ("I have got things to say. And if people want to listen, that's great," as he said in July.) Further details on your impenetrable tax affairs? To recap, last year Windrush Ventures (the trading name of the Office of T Blair) made £12m, of which they decided that almost £11m constituted "administrative expenses". I know I shouldn't have to point this out, but Tony, you're the ex prime minister. You were, until recently, in charge of the Treasury. If you can't be arsed to give it any money, then really… oh you know, I can't even be bothered to finish this sentence. Work it out for yourself.

In fact, it was neither of the above. Blair made the papers last week because of his ongoing, deeply felt personal commitment to social justice. Having made it his mission when he was in power to bring in a minimum wage to end the vicious capitalist exploitation of the low-waged and particularly the young, he has continued this now that he's out of office by employing young people and not paying them anything at all.

Last week, a graduate told how he'd been offered an unpaid internship in Tony Blair's office, but had asked to work only four out of five days so that he could continue to earn money in his part-time job to support himself. He was distraught when he was told that this wouldn't be acceptable and the offer was retracted.

A spokesman for the office of Tony Blair said: "We do run an internship programme and value our interns very highly. Each internship lasts for around three months and is designed to give young people valuable experience in a high-profile and fast-moving work environment. We support all our interns by paying travel and lunch expenses."

He's right. It is "valuable experience". Euan Blair, for example, managed to parlay the work experience that his daddy secured him on Capitol Hill with a congressman into a career as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley. It's hard to know whether it was nepotism, connections or that helpful glamour internship that really gave Euan the edge. But it certainly did no harm.

Because don't underestimate how much difference these early opportunities make. Twenty years ago, when I graduated, I walked straight into my first job – as a waitress. And one of the people I waited tables on was a university contemporary of mine. Her first job, it turned out, was with a well-known national newspaper group. This one. A position she'd secured through the connections of her semi-famous family member. She's now a powerful newspaper executive. I don't think it harmed her either.

It's become a cliche to rail at intern culture and how toxic it is, how socially exclusive it is, how it consolidates opportunities for the offspring of the moneyed and connected, but it's also true. And it's growing, burgeoning, an unstoppable tumour, smothering the few last remaining healthy cells of social mobility that we have left.

The Guardian and the Observer, I should point out, have reformed their work experience rules, but it's the exception, not the rule. Intern culture has become so mainstream that an ex-Labour politician who championed the minimum wage feels no shame at all in defending its use.

Oh, I know, I jest. Tony Blair and shame? In the same sentence? I find that if I'm in any sort of moral quandary, I stop and think: "What would Tony do?" Would it be a good idea to go on a jolly beach holiday with Silvio Berlusconi? Advise Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh dictator who's alleged to have siphoned $1bn out of his country and whose family has asset-stripped its main industries? Invade Iraq? Probably not. The rule is if you can imagine Tony Blair doing it, don't.

Earlier this year, Blair appeared in a video that waxed lyrical about the wonders of Kazakhstan, a country that Transparency International found came 122 out of 146 for corruption, where the president won an impressive and not entirely credible 91.15% of the vote in the last election and where torture and abuse are claimed to be widespread.

Blair had been recruited by Portland Communications, run by his former media adviser, Tim Allan. And this connection has been a wonderful work creation scheme for washed-up New Labour has-beens – Alastair Campbell has also done his bit for Kazakhstan. The fact is that Britain is now more like what Blair calls that "bastion of stability and progress", aka Kazakhstan.

Or at least the Britain that Tony Blair lives in and has tried to create in his image. Nursultan Nazarbayev bequeathed state industries to his children to see them on his way. Blair broke no laws to buy three £1m houses for his older offspring, but it's not a dissimilar impulse. He just wanted, like most parents, to do his best by them. To enable them to take the kind of unpaid internships that he's now providing for the children of other well-off parents. From wealth and connections come wealth and connections.

His friends are enriched, his children set up for life and his financial affairs demonstrate the great pellucid transparency of mud. It's not quite an oligarchy, is it? But it's not a million miles off either. Britain: that other great bastion of stability and progress.

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