This year Labour will receive pounds 1.5m, allocated by Mr Blair to his own as well as a number of other shadow-cabinet offices.. know who their paymasters are; they just don't tell the rest of us."Mr Blair's office also receives funding from the taxpayer, known as Short Money, negotiated by Ted Short, Labour leader of the Commons and now Lord Glenamara, in the 1970s. No one in Mr Blair's office knows who the donors are and therefore cannot be influenced by that knowledge, said a spokeswoman.But it is well known that David Sainsbury, chairman of Sainsbury's and former bankroller of the SDP, and the publisher Paul Hamlyn back Mr Blair.The spokeswoman defended the blind-trust system: "It is difficult, because we have to provide ourselves with the best possible office funding but if we identified donors we would be accused of acting on behalf of interests .. the Tories ... The secretive trust was run by Lord Haskel, a friend of Smith and former associate of Lord Kagan, Harold Wilson's business ally.Earlier this year Mr Blair distanced himself from this reminder of the past and set up a "blind trust", the Labour Leader's Office Fund, to receive donations. Only the trustees, Lord Rees, Baroness Jay and Baroness Dean, know the identity of donors. The commercial unit receives an income by organising union conferences and exhibitions for most of the party's largest affiliates.

As one union official pointed out: "If it wasn't for us, the fund-raising figures would not look half so good."Unions also sponsor constituencies and regional Labour organisations, not forgetting cash vouchsafed to the front bench for research. Then there is the party's Walworth Road headquarters, which is owned by unions and rented to Labour at a "non-commercial rate". The party says the metaphor is flawed, because the "teenager" has increasingly tapped into other sources of funding. According to the national executive committee's latest financial statement, unions contributed pounds 3.5m in affiliation fees to the party treasure chest in 1985, 80 per cent of the income. Then, unions also commanded 90 per cent of the vote at the policy-making annual conferences. In 1994 affiliates contributed 57 per cent of Labour's pounds 11.7m income, the report says. Party officials now estimate it as nearer 50 per cent at a time when unions' voting power has also been cut to half.But the figures do not give a complete picture: 70 per cent of the last general-election "war chest", for instance, came from union affiliates.

And while the party spends nothing on gathering unions' affiliation fees, there is a considerable cost attached to fund-raising activities. Part of the "non-union" contributions elicited by the party rely on the good offices of unions. "Just like the teenager, however, the Labour Party wants his parents to park round the corner, because he doesn't want his mates to see them." Thus the attitude of much of the union movement to "new Labour", even those who support Tony Blair. Stakeholder Economy."The centre includes a converted mini-cinema on the ground floor, refurbished as a news conference venue with a fibre-optic cable link to the Westminster bases of the BBC, ITN and Sky.. The relationship between unions and the Labour Party was once characterised by a trade-union sage as very much like that of parent and child. They gave birth to the party and nurtured it but then it became a teenager, expecting the parents' money and demanding lifts to sundry social occasions.

When the Scott report on arms to Iraq was published, all 1,800 pages were scanned into the system in five hours, to make it easier to find the key quotes.The system has all Labour politicians' recent speeches, statements and policy documents on it, as much Tory material as is consistent with copyright laws, and is connected to the Internet. And the computer terminals have screen-savers which scroll messages including: "New Britain New Labour"; "Young Country. (After the dissolution of Parliament, politicians cease to be MPs and no longer have access to the Palace of Westminster - although a dispensation has been made for opposition party leaders in the past.)Much has been made of the high-tech computer systems at the centre, especially the powerful database called Excalibur. Peter Mandelson, head of the election campaign team, already has an office there - hence the name.Tony Blair and John Prescott were also intended to be based there during the campaign, although an official said a final decision had not been made. The party already has a "flexible, task-force-based" campaigning operation, which combines press office, "instant rebuttal unit" for responding quickly to opponents' propaganda, campaign and policy departments. By the time of the election campaign, the media centre will accommodate about 150 people, including staff from leading politicians' offices.