
Emily Thornberry’s Islington home is at the heart of the liberal elite’s dinner party circuit. Directly next door is Margaret Hodge, who is expected to seek Labour’s nomination to be the next London Mayor.

Ms Thornberry's home is a vast, four-storey Victorian townhouse in an area beloved of lawyers and bankers, where a similar property changed hands earlier this year for £2.9 million - £900,000 above the threshold for Labour’s planned ‘soak-the-rich’ mansion tax.

Hodge’s likely rival, Tessa Jowell, lives a couple of miles north. If Ms Thornberry ever needs to consult Tom Baldwin, one of Ed Miliband’s key advisers, he is only a short stroll away.

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Mr Miliband can be found two miles away in a £2.6million townhouse, not far from his staunch supporter and former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

Notorious Number 10 spin doctor Alastair Campbell has himself a £2million property within walking distance, while Miliband’s adviser Stewart Wood is not far away either.

Others nearby include Ed’s brother David, Lord Falconer, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.

Ms Thornberry shares her home with Oxbridge educated lawyer husband Sir Christopher, a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers whose specialities included the lucrative field of off-shore trusts (which, among other things, help rich people avoid taxes).

The pair bought the property in 1993, two years after they married, and moved in during the same week as another great Islingtonian power couple, Tony and Cherie Blair.

Ms Thornberry, a close Ed Miliband ally and one of the first to back him as leader in his battle against brother David, stepped down from her post as Shadow Attorney General two days ago.

The resignation came after she was confronted by a 'furious' Ed following her tweet of a house in Rochester flying three England flags from the upstairs windows, with a white van parked in the driveway.

Where the other half live: Emily Thornberry and her QC husband moved into the elite neighbourhood at the same time as Tony and Cherie Blair

She was branded a snob and attacked for her subsequent comments to Mail Online that she had 'never seen anything like it', after which she protested that she had become a victim of anti-Islington prejudice.

Dane Ware, the owner of the house which is worth £119,000, has insisted that Ms Thornberry apologise to him over her remarks, but she has so far ducked any meeting with him.

The comments have caused a meltdown in the upper echelons of the Labour party, with one MP branding the gaffe 'horrendous, while others turned on Mr Miliband, saying his reaction had been hasty and ill thought-out.

Labour strategists had hoped a Ukip landslide in Rochester would mark the moment that pressure switched on to Mr Cameron and away from Mr Miliband, who has endured weeks of speculation about his leadership.

But with Ukip’s win narrower than expected, a result likely to deter further potential defectors who want to keep their Commons seats after next May’ s election, there was little sign of Tory disunity.