Emily Thornberry says family was so poor her cats 'had to be put down'

‘My father left us when I was seven and just disappeared. We had absolutely no money’

The Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary has previously been accused by opponents of being a member of the ‘metropolitan elite’ (Rex)

Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry has said her family fell on such hard times when she was a child that her “cats had to be put down”.

Ms Thornberry’s father was a successful lawyer who worked for the UN, but she claims he was a “terrible” parent who left her mother, a teacher, to bring up three children alone after the marriage broke down.

The MP for Islington South – who has frequently been accused of being a member of the “metropolitan elite” made the shocking claim in an interview – although she qualified another claim she made about bailiffs coming to the house, saying this could be a “false memory”.

Though Ms Thornberry began life “at the top of the hill” in leafy Guildford in Surrey, the family was brought crashing down to earth when her mother Sallie, and father Cedric divorced when she was seven.

She told the Daily Mirror: “My father left us when I was seven and just disappeared. We had absolutely no money. My mum was 30 with three young children. She couldn’t pay the mortgage, she couldn’t work and in the end we got chucked out.

“I don't know if this is a false memory, but I have a memory of bailiffs coming. And it was the 1960s so they were wearing bowler hats.

“The cats had to be put down. I suppose my mum just couldn’t cope with three kids, no money, going into council housing ... and cats.”

She said of her high-profile father, who also worked for Nato as a consultant: “He was very successful, sort of an international guy. He was a great man, but a terrible father.”

Ms Thornberry was born in 1960 and although there were laws around child maintenance for absent parents, they were often not well enforced.

As an MP, Ms Thornberry has spoken out against cuts to the benefits system, partly because of her own experience as a child after she and her mother and brothers went to live on a council estate. She recalled in the interview that the family was given tins of food and bags of clothes by neighbours.

She forged a successful career despite the early setback of failing her Eleven Plus and having to attend a secondary modern school. She went on to study law at the University on Kent, in Canterbury, and became a barrister, before marrying Christopher Nugee, an Oxford-educated lawyer.

Ms Thornberry previously said her mother struggled for years to bring up her and her brothers on benefits as a single parent.

In her maiden speech to Parliament in 2005, she said: “I wear the chips that I have on my shoulder with pride.

“You can take the girl out of the estate, but you can’t take the estate out of the girl.”

She progressed rapidly through the Labour ranks but was forced to step down as Shadow Attorney General after she was accused of “sneering” at the working classes in 2014.

She had tweeted a photograph of a house in Kent that had a white van and two England flags outside of it during a by-election campaign for Rochester and Strood.

Ms Thornberry was brought back into the front line by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is her neighbouring MP for Islington North.

She has caused controversy before, claiming in 2008 that she suspected there were very few children in Islington who had not been mugged – a claim the Metropolitan Police poured cold water on.

Ms Thornberry has raised eyebrows with her blunt turn of phrase, having described the views of her political opponents as “b******s” on more than one occasion – including on live television.

She has recently been tipped by some commentators to become Labour’s first female leader and will address the party conference this week.