Ed Miliband goes from Wallace to womaniser

What a day for Ed Miliband. Not only do the latest polls give Labour a growing lead over the Tories, but the Conservatives' two loudest cheer-leaders, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, find themselves having to report on his “tangled love life”. From Wallace to womaniser in one fell swoop – what more could Labour ask for?

The “disclosure” about Ed’s “secret romance” was actually revealed by Miliband’s wife, Justine Thornton, in a Daily Mirror interview yesterday when she talked about meeting Ed at a London dinner party she’d been invited to in March 2004.

“I was interested in him, I thought he was good looking and clever and seemed to be unattached,” she said. “But we just went down a conversational cul-de-sac.

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“Apparently we had nothing in common. He wanted to talk about economics – one of my least favourite subjects.”

Justine continued: “None of our conversations went anywhere. Then I found out he was secretly going out with the woman who had invited us for dinner. I was furious.”

What Justine did not tell the Mirror was that “the woman” was Stephanie Flanders, then of the BBC, now of J P Morgan Asset Management, who everyone thought had finished her relationship with Ed much earlier than 2004.

What the Telegraph and the Mail want to know is whether Flanders told her bosses at the Beeb that there was a potential conflict of interest, given that Ed was working as a special adviser to Gordon Brown at the time and she was covering economics for BBC Newsnight.

What Labour HQ wants to know is, please can we have more stories like this?

PS: A BBC spokesman refused to tell the Telegraph whether Flanders had informed the corporation of the relationship. "We wouldn't comment on former staff members’ personnel details."

PPS: The Mail did its best to interpret the story as further evidence of the Labour leader’s “somewhat caddish character”.

“Not only did he knife his elder brother in the back by ending his dream of getting the Labour leadership by standing against him (contrary to the wishes of their mother),” wrote Andrew Pierce, “but he met his future wife Justine (albeit unwittingly) at that dinner party hosted by his then girlfriend.”

Nice try, Andrew, but a little desperate.