Today, Tony Blair is weighing into the election campaign in a big way, warning about the dangers of a Tory government taking us out of Europe, and reiterating his backing for Ed Miliband, who he says is his "own man with his own convictions... determined to follow them, even when they go against the tide.”

The party is making much of his intervention, with Ed Miliband tweeting about it this morning from his official account. Party strategists will want the former Prime Minister to underline Miliband's credentials as a leader, and his pro-EU pitch to business.

But the feelings of many in the Labour Party towards their former leader are less than rosy. Here's the story of Blair's relationship with his party so far in this election campaign. In Facebook parlance: it's complicated. 

A traditional result

Blair spoke to the Economist last year and caused a bit of a fracas in Labour circles. Here's a quote from the story:

“The result in 2015, he quips, could well be an election “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”. Asked if he means a Tory win, Mr Blair confirms: “Yes, that is what happens.”

This was widely taken to mean that Blair thought Miliband is too left-wing to win the election—an interpretation which Blair later said was incorrect. Whatever the precise meaning of these remarks, Blair has repeatedly refused to budge from the position he took during his leadership of the party; that it works best when it is in the centre ground. Miliband has defined his leadership by moving to the left of New Labour, notably taking a harder line on taxing the rich and restricting the actions of big business than Blair and his fellow New Labourites did. Voters have noticed this: according to YouGov, they see Miliband as considerably more left wing-than Labour's last two leaders, and think the party is left of where it was in 2010. Should Miliband lose the election, that will provide plenty of scope for grumpy centrists to pin the blame on his "red Ed" image.

Not for me, thanks

Earlier this year, Blair offered every Labour candidate for the party's 106 target seats a donation of £1,000 towards his or her campaign—a move which some speculated was aimed at weakening the hold that trade unions have over party coffers. Several candidates publicly turned down the cash, with one, Sally Keeble, a former RAF wing commander, citing her opposition to the Iraq war—a conflict which still looms large in the minds of voters when they think of Blair. Blair's former spin doctor summed up the feelings of many Blairites when he slammed such conscientious objectors for "attention seeking," putting their own views before the needs of their party.

Sink or swim

The Telegraph today quotes Jon Cruddas, a senior Labour MP who has been part of Miliband's core team throughout much of his leadership, as attacking Blair for his "dystopian sink or swim politics," and saying that under his leadership the party descended into "drive-by shootings" and "gang warfare." He reportedly made the comments at a book launch a few weeks ago.

Such an attack summarises the ill-feeling that remains towards Blair in some sections of the party. Roy Jenkins, the former Labour front-bencher and co-founder of the SDP, once wrote that Blair "climbed up the outside of the Labour party." Blair's iconoclastic disregard for some central tenets of Labour thinking, most famously his scrapping of "clause IV," a section of the party's constitution which underlined its commitment to traditional socialism, mean he remains a bogeyman for much of the party's left.