What political future for Kate McC's friend Esther McVey?

by haroldd2 07.07.17 23:15

Kate McCann's long-time friend Esther McVey is being promoted in certain places as the next leader of the Tory party.

In 2015 various newspapers mentioned her as a possible future prime minister:

Liverpool Echo
Daily Telegraph
Huffington Post

The problem then was that her seat, Wirral West, was marginal - and she lost it in the election of that year. But after two years as chair of the British Transport Police Authority (yes, police), she got herself selected as the Tory candidate in George Osborne's old constituency, Tatton, where she won a 15000 majority in last month's general election. That was down from 18000 but still safe.

She's no longer chair of the BTPA, since an MP isn't allowed to hold an "office of profit under the Crown". But she's not back in the government either. What's her next step? She has clearly got some influential people behind her, but has she also got some, y'know, enemies?

My 2013 post on this forum about McVey.

Is she back sharing the London flat with Tory MP Philip Davies? Davies, a council member at the far-right Freedom Association, has a bookmaking background and was exposed as having received "donations" from Ladbrokes and other bookmakers before he pushed for betting tax to be cut.

by Malaprop 07.07.17 23:37

What does her future hold? Well to be quite honest, now that she is the honourable member for Tatton, I very much doubt that there is likely to be ever, ever, anybody other than a Tory elected for that constituency. So my guess is she will be a very old lady when she hangs up her boots. But I doubt very much that the McCann case will ever be concluded in her lifetime, never mind parliamentary life time.

by sar 08.07.17 0:05

+1 Malaprop, nice ~~work~~ way of being kicked into the long grass if you can get it.

by haroldd2 08.07.17 2:00

My hunch says that McVey has more interesting things in her future than simply aging.

When she lost her seat in 2015, she got work with

* Hume Brophy, the international public and government relations firm

* the Floreat Group, the privately-owned Mayfair-based "international financial group"

Floreat has three partners:

+ Hussam Otaibi, sometimes called al-Otaibi, trustee of the Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts (which Floreat as a corporate body states it is a long-term supporter of), who describes himself as British and is from Saudi Arabia, where he was born and grew up, although he also spent time in the US

+ Mutaz Otaibi, Hussam's brother

+ James Wilcox - "a lawyer with over 30 years of experience in the private client sector" who "has advised leading families, sovereign funds, and UHNWs in the UK and Europe"

UHNW stands for "Ultra High Net Worth individuals", i.e. billionaires. Sovereign funds are government investment funds, the biggest of which include several from the family-state regimes of the Gulf as well as funds from China and Norway.

Wilcox is a member of the development council for the Woolf Institute at Cambridge University - an institution that is worth far more time researching than I can currently spare! (The Woolf has another connection with the Prince of Wales that goes through Shabir Randeree, and given how it is a vehicle for forging "inter-faith" links and it's based in Cambridge, I would not be a bit surprised if there are several more such connections.) He is a partner at the London law firm Mishcon de Reya, which boasts of having "clients and friends across the Middle East". And he has been a director of Arkios, the "boutique corporate finance firm" with legs in London, Sweden, and (oh look) the United Arab Emirates.

So...predictions for McVey's next job in Westminster or Whitehall, anyone?

Home Office? Defence? Education? What do we reckon? She certainly seems to have her head screwed on, let us say "ambitiously". I am convinced she is someone we should be watching. She may well know quite a bit, I think she is still on her way upwards, and the two may be related.

by haroldd2 03.11.17 1:13

haroldd2 wrote:Kate McCann's long-time friend Esther McVey is being promoted in certain places as the next leader of the Tory party.

In 2015 various newspapers mentioned her as a possible future prime minister:

Liverpool Echo
Daily Telegraph
Huffington Post

The problem then was that her seat, Wirral West, was marginal - and she lost it in the election of that year. But after two years as chair of the British Transport Police Authority (yes, police), she got herself selected as the Tory candidate in George Osborne's old constituency, Tatton, where she won a 15000 majority in last month's general election. That was down from 18000 but still safe.

She's no longer chair of the BTPA, since an MP isn't allowed to hold an "office of profit under the Crown". But she's not back in the government either. What's her next step? She has clearly got some influential people behind her, but has she also got some, y'know, enemies?

My 2013 post on this forum about McVey.

Is she back sharing the London flat with Tory MP Philip Davies? Davies, a council member at the far-right Freedom Association, has a bookmaking background and was exposed as having received "donations" from Ladbrokes and other bookmakers before he pushed for betting tax to be cut.

Today, 2 November 2017, McVey was appointed as the government's Deputy Chief Whip, a position that is part of the "usual channels" and gives her direct access to the behind the scenes meetings between government and "opposition" that determine how parliamentary proceedings are really run. That is, to use a euphemism, very "market sensitive" information.

Nice work if you can get it. Or a nice post to place a lackey in if you're one of the families that use the Prince Charles-connected Floreat investment firm - which employed McVey as an "adviser" - as what it's fashionable in Mayfair and St James's to call a "private office".

Watch this woman.

by sar 03.11.17 23:10

Boom haroldd2! [fist bump / pound emoji]

Some excellent work, never trusted this person, but climb the greasy pole they have. How mysterious???

by JRP 03.11.17 23:31

The whips job is to convince a wobbly MP that they should vote for the party line, and they do this by compiling a dossier of dirt on as many MP's as they can, as a bargaining chip.

by sar 04.11.17 0:03

JRP very true! and what "dirt" might she have? Perhaps making her potentially "untouchable", but for how long?

by sar 04.11.17 0:05

odds on Priti Patel to leave before monday?

by sar 10.01.18 0:43

+1 to me!!!!! Patel has gone and EMV has been promoted! I rest my case!

by polyenne 10.01.18 3:03

Not a great case, it was haraldd2 who first mentioned McVey on this thread and PP stayed a bit longer than that November Monday !!
Good try though !!!!!!

by haroldd2 14.01.18 21:38

Priti Patel got sacked for being too friendly with Israel - so friendly that she was involved with interests in that country without telling the British government. McVey, meanwhile, has connections with the Arab Gulf. For a comparison, recall the Malcolm Rifkind - Jonathan Aitken pairing.

Recently the Saudis with other Gulf interests tried to isolate Qatar, getting high-profile support from US president Donald Trump. But it didn't work: only a very short while later, the British government signed a huge aerospace weapons deal with Qatar.

Remember that after the Lehmans crash, while Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland were in effect nationalised to keep them from bankruptcy, Barclays was also in trouble and was saved not by the British government (borrowing money from goodness knows who) but directly by the Qatari dictatorship. Without the Qatari money, who knows, perhaps Britain might have gone the way of Greece or Iceland?

This is not all in the past. Senior figures at Barclays were arrested last year and charged with acting criminally in relation to the Qatari arrangement. This could be Britain's largest ever financial crime trial, and one would have to be naive not to realise that British political figures and politically appointed figures must surely have been involved in the Barclays-Qatari arrangement somewhere along the line.

All that gives the Qatari ruling family a certain hold. Clearly they can stick up for themselves more successfully where Saudi is involved than the elites in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria could, which is not surprising given that they have far far more money, a lot of which is invested in London.

I wouldn't like to predict McVey's exact future career path. The main thing at the moment is that she is in the cabinet. I think she is likely to stay there. I'm not sure if it's been made public yet what cabinet committees she's on. I will try to find out.

by sar 15.01.18 3:38

+1 Thanks harold2, the Qatari's weren't throwing all that money around for nothing!

by Doug D 09.05.19 23:05

Esther McVey announces Conservative leadership bid

· 13 minutes ago

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48212755?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c467yj1j25dt/esther-mcvey&link_location=live-reporting-story

Surprisingly (or not!) a google image search has dozens of recent fairly formal 'head shots', but her 'glamour poses' are hidden way, way down.

What political future for Kate McC's friend Esther McVey? Esther

What political future for Kate McC's friend Esther McVey? Esther

by kaz 10.05.19 0:25

Snipped from Dr Sally Baker's blog:

'' Osborne’s former seat of Tatton is now held by the Esther McVey, who used to make a living appearing on mindless TV programmes and now graces the Commons with her own brand of simplistic right wing homespun idiocy eg. that starving disabled people by denying them sufficient benefits to live on will Prepare Them For Work. Esther was Call Me Dave’s junior Minister for the Disabled, 2012-13. Esther previously held the Merseyside seat of Wirral West, part of Dafydd’s empire. Esther grew up in Liverpool, where her parents owned a construction business, J. G. McVey & Co. Esther herself has run Liverpool-based businesses. Esther has a degree from Liverpool John Moores University, among other things.

Esther began her media career in the early 1990s, when the North Wales Police launched their investigation into a possible VIP paedophile ring in north Wales/Cheshire.

Esther was a co-presenter of the Children’s BBC strand But First This in 1991 and subsequently presented and produced a wide range of programmes, co-hosting GMTV, BBC1’s science entertainment series ‘How Do They Do That?’, 5’s Company, ‘The Heaven and Earth Show’, Shopping City, BBC2’s youth current affairs programme Reportage and Channel 4’s legal series Nothing But The Truth .

McVey took part in Eve Ensler’s ‘The Vagina Monologues’ at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool.

McVey returned to Liverpool and set up her own business, Making It (UK) Ltd, which provided training for SMEs, as well as providing office space for new start-up businesses, which led to Esther founding “Winning Women”, supported by funding from the North West Regional Development Agency.

Esther spent the first two years of her life as a fostered Barnardo’s child. Bechod!

So who’s idea was it to promote this toxic airhead from Dafydd-International, first as a media tart, then as a Winning Woman Empowering Other Wimmin and then as a Cabinet Minister promoting Dafyddesque solutions to disability ? ''
My comment:
How DO these airheads rise to such dizzy heights? Well I suppose if Theresa May can do it, Esther can!

by haroldd2 11.05.19 7:40

At the very least Esther McVey is looking to get back into the cabinet and soon.

Her career so far shows that she has some powerful backers.

by Guest 11.05.19 8:06

A few powerful fronters 'n all.

by Doug D 20.06.19 20:12

We all knew she liked having her photo taken, not that it did her any good!

Esther McVey claimed £8,750 in expenses for personal photographer

Exclusive: Tory leadership hopeful spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money in just two years

The Conservative leadership hopeful Esther McVey has spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money claiming for a personal photographer on expenses.
The MP has submitted claims worth £8,750 for the services of the photographer and PR man Jonathan Farber in just two years, according to an analysis of data held by the expenses watchdog. McVey – whose website is adorned with photographs of herself – hired Farber, an ex-Tory councillor in her constituency in Cheshire.
One receipt obtained using freedom of information laws from May 2018 shows that Farber invoiced McVey £750 for five hours’ work for two shoots including “edits, image processing and travel time”.
One of the shoots featured McVey, who was a broadcaster and businesswoman before entering politics, showing her support for paddle boarders joining the fight against plastic waste. The other was for a Women’s Institute shoot and talk. The invoice is from “Jonathan Farber photo, video & consultancy”, and states McVey is being billed for “comms consultancy”, adding: “Fixed rate retained professional photo, video and communications services.”……………………….

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/12/esther-mcvey-expensed-thousands-of-pounds-for-personal-photographer?fbclid=IwAR0Z-pd_EAPX47cUr1Y5iSZDl05v92egAABor3JTCFjQsWfHIAToV0IIlNQ

by Guest 20.06.19 21:27

What about Clarry he failed to become an MP and then again
as MEP he's forever tainted by his support (lies)for the McCanns,he
is toxic for he tories.I wonder if he regrets it now.

by **PeterMac** 20.06.19 23:34

Doug D wrote:Esther McVey announces Conservative leadership bid

Surprisingly (or not!) a google image search has dozens of recent fairly formal 'head shots', but her 'glamour poses' are hidden way, way down.

Strange that her Big Best Buddy Kate McCann did the same sort of up-skirt shots during her unending 'search'.

What political future for Kate McC's friend Esther McVey? 117

What political future for Kate McC's friend Esther McVey? 211

by Doug D 13.02.20 23:31

Poor old Esther!

Sacked again and with only a £25k payout apparently. Maybe she’ll have to go back to ‘glamour modelling’ to supplement her meagre MP’s salary.

Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey among eight sacked in Boris Johnson cabinet reshuffle

Basit MahmoodThursday 13 Feb 2020 9:29 am

https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/13/first-cabinet-sacking-boris-begins-brutal-reshuffle-senior-mps-12232164/

by Liz Eagles 14.02.20 3:00

PeterMac wrote:
Doug D wrote:[size=62]Esther McVey announces Conservative leadership bid[/size]

Surprisingly (or not!) a google image search has dozens of recent fairly formal 'head shots', but her 'glamour poses' are hidden way, way down.

Strange that her Big Best Buddy Kate McCann did the same sort of up-skirt shots during her unending 'search'.

That's what you get from a specially allocated UK government PR machine. Those photographs of Kate McCann are revolting.

In fairness to McVey she quickly and quite rightly distanced herself from the Madeleine fund.

by **PeterMac** 15.02.20 1:04

It would be interesting to know what she discovered.
She was responsible for this leak, apparently. A sacking offence in itself.

" https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk-news/mccanns-used-madeleine-fund-to-pay-their-mortgage-1-697486

CASH from the fund created to help find the missing youngster Madeleine McCann has been used to pay the family's mortgage, it was claimed last night.

A few thousand pounds were taken from the fund to pay the mortgage on the McCanns' home in Rothley, Leicestershire, according to a report in the London Evening Standard. Esther McVey, a trustee of the Find Madeleine fund, reportedly confirmed that two monthly payments were made from the 1 million fund.
She was a founder member / Trustee / Director, but later deleted all reference to her involvement from her blogs.
Her resignation was announced in January 2008. It is unclear when it actually happened.
HaysMcIntyre, the Auditors, hung on until 2017, but baled out shortly after a letter to them and the Solicitors BatesWellsBraithwaite had been made public.
There is obviously no connection at all between these events. It would be ludicrous to make one ! [I think that's right, isn't it Clarence ? Tudor ? ]

by Bob the Miller 29.09.20 0:44

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this, apologies if not.
Today the Knutsford Guardian newspaper (constituency of Ester McVey MP) has an article on the wedding of Miss McVey to '...fellow Conservative MP Philip Davies in an intimate ceremony on Saturday.'
https://www.knutsfordguardian.co.uk/news/18738654.tatton-mp-ties-knot-ceremony-parliaments-historic-chapel/
Mr Davis has been the MP for Shipley since 2005,
https://www.philip-davies.org.uk/about-philip
Also;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Davies
In the Wiki article it says that he and Miss McVey had a "long time on-and-off romantic interest" although how long it does not say but it does say that he divorced from his then wife, Deborah Gail Hemsley in 2012.

In an article in the Telegraph on 9th of June 2017;
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/dont-mess-women-twitter-gloats-anti-feminist-philip-davies-loses/
(Note; to carry on reading the above article I reload the page and immediately knock the router off before its blocked!) it was stated that he is 'well known for his anti feminist views' and many were, apparently, pleased that he had lost his seat at the General election, and 'tweeted' messages accordingly, however they were mistaken and he had in fact won.

One of the 'tweets' that appears to be in his favour, perhaps sarcastically, is one from a Kate McCann;

Parliament looks to have lost a great representative for women's rights in Philip Davies.
— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) June 9, 2017

In 2016 Philip Davies was accused of trying to 'talk out' a domestic violence bill by talking for 1 hour and 20 minuets.
Looks like Philip Davies was on the Media Select Committee in 2009, after the Express libel case, where the Daily Express editor, Peter Hill, was interviewed over his 'milking' of the McCann story. According to the same article Gerry McCann also gave evidence; When he gave evidence to the committee last month, Gerry McCann said the Express titles were “the worst offenders by some distance” and added that suing them for libel was “a very easy decision”.
https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/daily-express-editor-defends-madeleine-mccann-stories/

Not sure if its the same Kate McCann but if so then would she be 'having a go' at her old friends lover who appears to have been sympathetic towards them at the Select Committee?
An other interesting 'connection' perhaps?
Willing to be corrected of course.