Heat on Labour Party leader over second kitchen
British left-wing leader Ed Miliband hoped to win more votes by inviting a TV crew into his home. Instead his election rivals have gleefully seized on the revelation the would-be "man of the people" has two kitchens in his £2 million (HK$23m) home.
British left-wing leader Ed Miliband hoped to win more votes by inviting a TV crew into his home. Instead his election rivals have gleefully seized on the revelation the would-be "man of the people" has two kitchens in his £2 million (HK$23m) home.
With around two months to go before what's expected to be a close national poll, Miliband is now facing a barrage of jeers, from Britain's mainly right-wing press, who claim the face of the main opposition party is a hypocrite for campaigning on a promise he understands the working class.
"Exposed: Eddie Two Kitchens," said a headline in the right-leaning newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch, on Friday. It has long mocked the Labour leader as a socially awkward left-wing nerd.
The existence of Miliband's second kitchen only came to light after the Labour leader - whose personal popularity trails that of Prime Minister David Cameron - agreed to a BBC interview with his wife Justine, who portrayed her husband as a victim of vicious media attacks.
The couple were filmed in a small, plain kitchen drinking tea and wearing casual clothes.
The press initially mocked the kitchen for appearing too modest. A columnist for the - also the wife of a senior Conservative and close Cameron ally - said it looked like a communist housing project and showed the Milibands were "aliens".
That prompted a friend of the couple's to defend them, saying it was only their second kitchen and that the main kitchen was "lovely" - upon which the press pounced in earnest.
Miliband's perceived sin in the eyes of his critics is all the greater as he has often accused Cameron - a descendant of King William IV regularly filmed at his luxurious Oxfordshire country house - of not empathising with poorer voters and presiding over a cost of living crisis.
Miliband denied he had sought to buttress his popular image by being filmed in the smaller kitchen.
"The house had a kitchen downstairs when we bought it. And it is not the one we use. We use the small one upstairs," he told .
