EXCLUSIVE: Rebecca Long-Bailey's very middle class lifestyle revealed: Labour front runner lives in leafy village dubbed 'Monton Carlo' with £100k-a-year marketing boss husband sparking distrust among grassroots activists
- Long-Bailey's home in a plush part of Manchester are described as embarrassing by grassroots Labour activists distrustful of her sudden emergence
- The 40-year-old has risen quickly up the Labour ranks after joining the party in 2010 after a successful law career
- But some party members are wary of her middle class lifestyle with her husband who is a high-flying marketing executive
- They are uncomfortable that her working class socialist values seem to jar with her middle class existence
Socialist Labour wannabe Rebecca Long-Bailey lives in a plush home in one of Manchester's wealthiest suburbs dubbed 'Monton-Carlo' with her £100k-a-year marketing boss husband, MailOnline can reveal.
The former solicitor, who has enjoyed a meteoric rise up the Labour party thanks to her left-wing credentials, counts judges, barristers and football stars amongst her neighbours.
The 40-year-old MP for Salford and Eccles, earning £79,468-a-year, who boasts about her work for the NHS during her legal career, lives with her husband Stephen Bailey, Global Marketing Director for BWA Water Additives.
Rebecca Long-Bailey lives in this four bedroom home in a well-heeled part of Manchester where neighbours are doctors and lawyers, which troubles Labour's grassroots activists
Salford MP Long Bailey (right), who earns £79,468 per year, lives with her husband Stephen Bailey, 46, a Global Marketing Director for BWA Water Additives who drives a £50k Audi A5
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Mr Bailey, 46, who graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a chemicals degree, drives a top-of-the-range £50,000 Audi to his office three miles from the couple's home.
But their comfortable existence and joint income approaching £200k is said to 'embarrass' some grassroots Labour activists who say they don't trust her because she has come from nowhere to be a leadership frontrunner.
'People would be appalled if they knew the middle class lifestyle she has,' said former Salford councillor Paul Wilson, a Labour member for 20 years.
'It doesn't sit comfortably with what she says at all. She is not who she says she is, she is a career politician in the truest possible sense.
'I think if the working-class public knew who she is they would be very concerned. But Corbyn-type people choose to turn a blind eye to it.'
Another said: 'When you look at where she lives compared to what she talks about and her values… I would have thought that could be embarrassing.'
Some Labour activists revealed their embarrassment over Long-Bailey's living arrangements in leafy Manchester as she draws on her working class roots and extolled her socialist values
Long-Bailey, 40, is a mother-of-one who had a successful career as a lawyer before moving her way up the Labour Party. She and husband Stephen bought this property for £588,00 in 2016
Long-Bailey's adult life is a far cry from her loving but difficult upbringing in the shadow of Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium.
Her mother, Una, 72, was a shop worker and her father, Jimmy, 72, was an oil worker for Shell and trade union activist at the Barton docks in Manchester. He later worked as a taxi driver.
But despite her working class roots, the mother-of-one's lifestyle has raised eyebrows amongst critics suspicious at the speed with which she's burst onto the scene, who claim they simply don't know what she really stands for.
She aligned herself to 'comrade' Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to become leader Corbyn's heir-apparent.
But her lack of history with the party is an issue, having only joined in 2010 aged of 30 by then a successful lawyer, having been put off because she felt conflicted by Tony Blair's leadership.
And the fact that she resides on a leafy private road in one of Manchester's plushest areas, which jars with the socialism she loudly espouses in her bid for power.
Long-Bailey, who is seem by some in Labour as Jeremy Corbyn's heir apparent, has begun her campaign to replace him in an underwhelming fashion as her pitch to be leaver was savaged
Another Labour activist admitted to feeling troubled by her emergence.
'She has never said when she joined the party. She has been very vague. And to be honest I don't really know her politics.
'I know what she says, but whether that is true, I just don't know. It seems a rather drastic conversion. She was not even active in the party.
'No one knew anything about her until the Unite union put her forward for this constituency. I think people are suspicious. She came from nowhere.
'To my eyes, that house, in a wealthy area next to a very large council estate is not consistent with the socialist message. We have to be whiter than white.
'God help us if she wins. That is my fear. She is not very experienced,' they added.
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