Labor Party paid to style P.M.'s wife

LONDON, April 21 (UPI) -- Keeping Cherie Blair's hair in order during last year's British parliamentary elections cost the Labor Party almost $500 a day.

Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, charged the party about $490 a day during the last two weeks of the campaign for the services of her hairdresser. The total bill came to almost $14,000, The Independent reported.

Labor officials included invoices from Andre Suard, who runs a hairdressing establishment in London's stylish Mayfair district, in their accounting to the Electoral Commission. They were noted as "hairstyling for Cherie Blair."

"Mrs. Blair worked fantastically hard during the election and visited more than 50 constituencies during the campaign," a party spokesman told the newspaper. "She is enormously popular with the party and, don't forget, we won the election."

But that victory was dearly bought. The party borrowed almost $25 million from businessmen -- loans now under investigation in the "cash for peerages" flap, the report said.