“THE only newspaper allowed in our house is the Morning Star,” Laura Alvarez said to cheers at the Matchwomen’s Festival in Bow, east London, on Saturday night.

Jeremy Corbyn’s wife was speaking in the first joint interview the pair have ever given, and described how hostile media began spreading dirt on her as early as 2015, the year Mr Corbyn won the Labour leadership, with articles lying about her coffee import business as a means to attack him.

“It’s important we build our own narrative, because I don’t trust the mainstream media. I have good friends and I ask, why do you read the Guardian? And they say, ‘it has some good articles.’ But for every good article there are 10 nasty articles that misrepresent everything!”

Mr Corbyn said the media had often had their house “under siege” while he was leader, with Ms Alvarez often unable to leave the house without “being confronted by incredibly rude and aggressive people on behalf of the Sun, the Mail, the Express — and also by the way, the broadsheet newspapers who are quite capable of being unbelievably rude and nasty as well.”

Interviewer Louise Raw recalled a conversation with author Michael Rosen early in the Corbyn leadership, when she had expressed dismay at the way the former leader and his politics were being distorted.

“Michael said, ‘You’ve seen nothing yet, because their money is frightened. And as Jeremy gets closer to power, which he will because his policies will be immensely popular, we will see this double and triple and quadruple.’ He was so right.”