Ed Miliband has insisted that he and his wife use the small upstairs kitchen at their Victorian townhouse in north London rather than the much bigger and better equipped one in the basement.
The Labour leader’s domestic arrangements came under scrutiny after he was filmed by the BBC having a cuppa with his wife, Justine Thornton, in a small galley kitchen at their home near Kentish Town.
The drabness of the scene – the room appeared to be furnished with nothing more than a lime green bin and a wooden stool – came as a surprise given that houses in the same street with large and luxurious kitchen-diners downstairs have sold for close to £3 million.
Then a family friend revealed that the room in question was actually the Milibands’ second kitchen – “a functional kitchenette” used for “tea and quick snacks” – and that the couple’s real kitchen was “lovely”.
That revelation fuelled suspicions that Mr Miliband – or “two kitchens Ed” as he was quickly dubbed – had been trying not to come across as too posh.
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Asked about the row today, the Labour leader denied any such motives. He told the Birmingham Mail: “The house we bought had a kitchen downstairs when we bought it and it is not the one we use. We use the small one upstairs.”
Asked again why he was filmed in the smaller kitchen, he added: “This is the kitchen Justine and I use.”
Mr Miliband’s response is unlikely to end his kitchen nightmare. The would-be PM invited the BBC into his family home in an attempt to soften his image after criticism that he was part of an aloof metropolitan elite. Ms Thornton, a barrister, told the corporation’s deputy political editor, James Landale, that pre-election attacks were going to “get worse”.
“I think over the next couple of months it’s going to be really vicious, really personal, but I’m totally up for this fight,” she said. “I think this goes way beyond Ed as an individual, I think it’s about whether decencies and principle count for something in political life’”.
She said that family time was vitally important to the Labour leader and that his “biggest regret about the job is not seeing the children enough or worrying he does not see the children as much as he would like”.
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A source familiar with the BBC interview said that Mr Miliband had not asked to be filmed in the kitchenette. A segment was filmed there only because the BBC needed a “linking shot” to introduce an interview with Mr Miliband on his sitting room sofa, and the kitchenette was the closest room.
The BBC said: “We wouldn’t give commentary on how we go about filming, and do not have a comment.”
As soon as the interview was broadcast, kitchen commentators chimed in with praise and criticism. Stephen Bayley, the design critic, said that the kitchen “looks as if it was just recently abandoned by cynical and maladroit builders when the budget ran out”.
Dominic Lutyens, a design writer, said that the modest kitchen “reflected a non-materialistic outlook on life”.
Mr Miliband joins a trend sweeping the top end of the property market. Last year the Duchess of Cambridge installed a private second kitchen in her new four-storey apartment in Kensington Palace and overhauled the kitchen in her new Norfolk home.