Ed Miliband was accused of being out of touch with ordinary people after the Labour leader was forced to admit he had underestimated the cost of his own family's weekly shop.
The cost-of-living campaigner originally claimed his supermarket bill came to around £70 or £80.
Later, however, he qualified that amount saying it was only the spend on "basic" groceries such as fruit and vegetables for himself, his wife and their two children.
Critics seized on his comments, accusing the Labour leader, who has put ordinary worker's struggles paying household bills at the top of his political agenda, of being a "hypocrite".
When he was pressed about his food spending on ITV's Good Morning Britain, Mr Miliband said: "We probably spend £70, £80 a week on groceries at least, probably more than that."
The Labour leader was then told the average weekly bill for a family of four is more than £100 - so he would be spending "significantly more" than £70 to £80.
He later admitted that his shopping estimate may have been on the low side, saying he had been thinking of the bill for "basic groceries".
Figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Family Food survey show the average weekly expenditure on all household food and drinks in 2012 was £29.29 per person, an increase of 4.6% on 2011.
Priti Patel, the Conservative MP for Witham, said Mr Miliband was a "hypocrite", adding that he was "out of touch with hard-working Britain." A Tory source said: "It's the same old economic incompetence from the Labour Party that gave Britain the biggest peacetime deficit in history. They have no long-term plan to fix the economy and Ed Miliband can't even get the numbers right for his political gimmicks."
Two years ago Nadine Dorries, the outspoken Tory backbench MP, famously attacked David Cameron and George Osborne saying that they were posh boys who would not even know the price of milk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article