Emily Thornberry's white van Tweet was 'drippingly patronising', Nick Clegg says "I just thought it was a jaw-droppingly condescending way of treating someone who just proudly hanging some flags outside their home," he told his regular press conference in Westminster. Mr Clegg's comments were received with surprise from the Liberal Democrat candidate standing in Miss Thornberry's seat, which was a high target for the Lib Dems in 2010. Terry Stacy, the Islington South and Finsbury Lib Dem parliamentary candidate who hopes to overturn Thornberry's 3,569 majority in 2015 told the Huffington Post: "I don't know what is behind that comment." I have no idea where he was coming from. It may have been a slide-by comment, I am a bit surprised. Mr Stacey, who was leader of Islington council between 2008 and 2010, insisted that, unlike Thornberry, he was in touch with the seat's poorer constituents. "You can't get more working class than me," he said. I still live in social housing. I was probably the only council leader that did live in social housing in Islington over last 30-years. Senior Labour figures have since criticised Mr Miliband for firing Miss Thornberry because it ensured the crisis overshadowed the Tory defeat to Ukip in the Rochester by-election. However other critics from within her party have said the whole episode revealed how the party has become "culturally adrift" from its "traditional working class base." The picture Miss Thornberry took and captioned 'image from Rochester' which caused the crisis Emily Thronberry cycles on her own Islington street Labour's work and pensions secretary admitted that the Thornberry scandal has reduced Labour's chances of winning the next election. Rachel Reeves, one of Mr Miliband's closest allies, said the furore had set back his hopes of entering Number 10. In the first admission from a senior Labour frontbencher that the row will cost the party votes in the run-up to the general election in May she said: "I was angry when I saw it, because I am working hard, as are other Labour MPs and activists around the country, trying to get a Labour government back in six months" time and she set that process back." After the gaffe Miss Thornbury, who lives in a £3 million townhouse in North London, only compounded matters with her explanation. She told The Telegraph that she thought the picture was "remarkable" because she had never seen a house "completely adorned with flags before." Mr Ware, the 36-year-old father of four who owns the house, was furious. He said: "She is a snob - what has she got a three storey townhouse in Islington?"