McVey To Be Kicked Upstairs?

According to The Liverpool Echo, Tory MP, Nigel Evans claims Esther McVey should be elevated to the House of Lords. “Let’s get her into the House of Lords as quickly as possible”, he gushed. In my blog from 3 May, I suggested that being ‘kicked upstairs’ was a very real possibility should she lose her seat.

Perhaps in a bid to retain McVey’s talent (sic) in the event of a defeat, Cameron appointed the deeply unpopular hatchet-woman to the Privy Council last February.

So what is the Privy Council? There are two answers to that question: the first is that membership guarantees a job for life and the second is, according to its website,

… the mechanism through which interdepartmental agreement is reached on those items of Government business which, for historical or other reasons, fall to Ministers as Privy Counsellors rather than as Departmental Ministers.

I prefer to see the Privy Council as an anachronistic institution that extends the privileges of the already privileged. Appointees are required to swear an oath that was written during the Tudor period. To reveal this oath was once considered to be treasonous.

Officially, Privy Counsellors are ‘advisers’ to the monarch and are granted the title ‘Right Honourable’.

McVey said,“this is a huge honour and I am absolutely delighted and privileged to become a member.”

McVey could find herself sitting at the cabinet table when the Queen’s Birthday Honours are announced next month. The Cat thinks she’ll be given Minister without portfolio as it saves Spamface having to come up with a proper cabinet rank. She’s also likely be reunited with the terminally thick and equally cruel, IDS.

So what exactly is McVey’s talent apart from being a bully?

 

 

Some Thoughts About The Future of Esther McVey

To be honest, I try not to think about Esther McVey, the television host turned Tory minister-cum-tormentor of the poor and disabled. It’s enough to give me nightmares. However, things aren’t going her way in West Wirral and if the polls can be trusted, she’ll be out on her ear next week.

So what lies ahead for McVey if the voters kick her out? Well, for starters, she could be ‘kicked upstairs’ and become ‘Baroness McVey of Somewhere Or Other’. On the other hand, she may do what IDS did when he lost his job as Tory leader and don sackcloth and ashes, and claim she’s doing her penance (like IDS, she’s a Catholic). Readers may recall IDS visited housing estates during his penitent period. He claimed to ‘understand’ the poor,  while posing for photographers outside a block of flats before quickly scuttling off in his limo. He also set up a think-tank, the ironically-named, Centre for Social Justice. Could McVey also set up a think-tank? I doubt it. She likes the cameras too much.

McVey could return to television as a talking head, appearing as a guest on programmes like Countdown  and The One Show as Gyles Brandreth has done. I can see her taking over from Dominic ‘Man of the People’ Littlewood as the host of Saints and Scroungers. Then again, she may opt for a daytime confessional show. Think of the Jeremy Kyle Show but with less sympathy. If that’s possible.

Unlike the millions she punished for being poor and disabled, at least McVey has a future. It’s just a shame that future isn’t in prison.

Esther McVey, “5’s Company” and me

I first met Esther McVey, the current Minister for Disabled People, when I was booked to perform my routine on Channel 5’s bizarre afternoon programme, 5’s Company, some time in 1997. This show had 5 presenters, which was a recipe for disaster in my mind. I had been asked to do about 5 minutes worth of stuff. Not an easy task for someone who was once known as one of the circuit’s three sweariest people, which also included such illustrious company as Bob Boyton and Jerry Sadowitz (apparently there was a ‘book’ on which one of us said “fuck” the most in any given week). After spending some time cleaning the salty language from of my material (which was never vetted, by the way), I left all the political material intact.  It was risky to be sure.

After my first spot on the programme, I was invited back a year later because someone had pulled out. It was on this occasion that I met McVey in the wings, who said (or words to the effect) to me, “I didn’t like your stuff about the Conservatives”. I paused, looked at her and replied, “You’re a Scouser”. “Not all of us are left-wingers”, she snapped back. “In which case, you’re rather unusual”, I quickly retorted. That was the last time I ever said anything to McVey’s face. Since then, I’ve been tracking her career and so wasn’t surprised to discover that she’d been elected as Tory MP for Wirral West. The Wirral, once in Cheshire, is where Scousers tended to go once they’d made it big. I’m not so sure that’s the case nowadays. I mean, have you seen what Birkenhead looks like these days?

Scouse Tories are as rare as unicorns and to this day I can only count them on one hand. There’s Steve ‘Shagger’ Norris, Edwina ‘Eggs’ Currie, Stephen McPartland MP and Kit Shitehouse Malthouse, who is one of Bozza’s deputies. I only became aware of McPartland the other day when he rose to speak in The Commons. That’s a total of 5 Scouse Tories in the public eye. That isn’t many for a metropolitan county with a population of 1,380,000. But then if you look at Scotland, you’ll see a similar picture.

Here’s a clip of McVey on 5’s Company being used by ventriloquist Scarlet Ray Watt as his ‘impromptu’ assistant. Doesn’t he look a little like Eddie Murphy?