text: Landlord: Despite attacking right to buy, Emily Thornberry has three homes . A senior Labour politician was under fire last night for attacking right to buy – while renting out a property she bought from a housing association. Emily Thornberry has come out against David Cameron’s pledge to extend the right to buy policy from council tenants to those in housing association homes. But eight years ago she and her husband bought at auction a housing association property now worth almost £1million. Tories said Miss Thornberry, who lost her frontbench job after tweeting a sneering picture of a house covered in England flags and with a white van outside, opposed right to buy but not ‘right to buy to let’. ‘This hypocrisy goes right to the heart of Ed Miliband’s Islington-based, out-of-touch Labour Party,’ said Henry Smith, who is seeking re-election as Conservative MP for Crawley. ‘They speak out against plans that help the aspirations of hardworking people on days when it’s politically useful.’ Housing association chiefs have also been accused of hypocrisy for drawing huge salaries and living in mansions while wishing to deny tenants a foot on the property ladder. Ruth Davison, of the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, has a£1million home in fashionable Islington, north London. Miss Thornberry yesterday retweeted an article from the federation attacking right to buy. And, in a question-and-answer session last week, the Labour candidate for Islington South and Finsbury criticised the policy directly. She said: ‘I don’t have a problem per se with people being able to buy their council flat or council house, so long as it is replaced like for like. 'And that’s what the problem has been. There has been a massive sell-off but they have not been replaced.’ Council house tenants in England can already buy their home at a discount of up to £103,900. The Tories would extend this to 800,000 housing association tenants who now have limited purchase rights and to 500,000 who have no rights at all. Around 2.7million people live in these properties. The subsidies would be funded by making councils sell their more costly properties when they become vacant. Each would be replaced on a one-for-one basis. The picture that cost Miss Thornberry her job as shadow attorney general was taken during the Rochester by-election, which was won by Ukip. The case highlighted just how much high-value property Miss Thornberry owned. Costly tweet: Emily Thornberry lost her frontbench job after tweeting this picture, with the sneering caption 'Image from #Rochester' while on the campaign trail in Medway, Kent . She lives with her husband, high court judge Sir Christopher Nugee, in a four-storey Victorian townhouse on an exclusive crescent in Barnsbury, north London, worth almost £3million. Emily Thornberry was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet in November after sneering at a home with St George’s flags hung outside and a white van on the drive. She said she had ‘never seen anything like it’ after tweeting a photo of the terraced home while on the campaign trail for the Rochester and Strood by-election in Kent. The then-shadow attorney general, who lives in a £3million north London house, wrote mockingly alongside the photo: ‘Image from Rochester.’ At first she tried to defend her remarks but was told to quit within hours of the tweet. The home’s owner, cage fighter Dan Ware, 37, branded her a ‘snob’. Speaking at the time, leader Ed Miliband said: ‘Respect is a basic rule of politics and I’m afraid her tweet conveyed a sense of disrespect.’ Miss Thornberry also owns a £600,000 flat in Guildford, Surrey, which she bought for her mother in 2000. In March 2007, her husband bought the housing association property in Finsbury at auction for £572,000. The three-storey townhouse was bought from Ujima, a housing association catering largely for ethnic minority tenants, which went bust just months later. It is now let. The fact a housing association sells a property does not necessarily mean social housing stock has fallen. They could use the cash to build in a cheaper area. During part of her childhood, Miss Thornberry lived in a council house. At the age of seven, her parents divorced and she and her two younger brothers moved into social housing with their mother. Labour politicians continued to attack the right to buy extension yesterday. David Lammy, a potential London mayoral candidate, tweeted: ‘Extending right to buy is one of the most senseless and irresponsible pledges ever made by a British political party.’ Last night a YouGov poll for the Policy Exchange think-tank suggested 50 per cent back extended right to buy. Housing fat cat who hates right to buy is a Labour supporter with £1m home . Hypocrite? Ruth Davison, leading critic of David Cameron's plan to extent the right to buy scheme is a Labour party member and the owner of a £1million house in Islington, London . The leading critic of Conservative Party plans to give housing association tenants a right to buy herself lives in a £1million house. As director of policy and external affairs at the National Housing Federation, Ruth Davison has been leading the campaign to prevent millions of people getting a real chance of owning their own homes. But just as she did not advertise the fact that she is a member of her local Labour party in Islington, North London, neither has she revealed just how comfortable her own house is. In reality she has been one of the country’s biggest gainers from the private property boom. She also earned hefty salaries in public bodies for years when Labour was in power. Miss Davison, 44, and husband Chris Bailey, 47, who describes himself as an ‘urban regenerator, non-profit board member and social entrepreneur’, bought a large terrace house in Islington for £440,000 ten years ago. It has now rocketed to more than £1million in value. Yet on behalf of the fat-cat housing association bosses she speaks for, Miss Davison has been across the newspapers and broadcasters this week fighting to stop the Conservative election campaign proposal to extend ‘right to buy’ legislation from council house tenants to the 2.7million people living in housing association properties. Under the scheme, housing association tenants would receive discounts of tens of thousands of pounds on the market value of their homes. Miss Davison told the BBC in response to the Tory right-to-buy plans on Tuesday that it was wrong to effectively give money to ‘some of the most securely housed people in the country on some of the lowest rents’. She added: ‘We are independent organisations and charities – you can no more force a housing association to sell their assets at less than they’re worth than you can force Tesco, or even Cancer Research. So housing associations would have to be fully recompensed for any sale. There will be a cost to the taxpayer.’ Miss Davison’s first major taxpayer-funded role under Labour was at the Audit Commission, with other senior roles at Bedford and Hertfordshire Strategic Health Authority and the National Patient Safety Agency. Last night Miss Davison said: ‘The price of a family house is now beyond the reach of many – I couldn’t afford to buy my home now. ‘We need to build more homes of all types to make housing more affordable for everyone, not just give money away to the lucky few.’
target: Emily Thornberry has criticised Conservative 'right-to-buy' policy .
  Family bought housing association property for £572,000 in 2007 .
  Three-storey property in north London now worth almost £1million .