Never mind a customs union... I’m starting a marital one!
Yes, after turning down countless proposals, TV star turned No 10 contender Esther McVey reveals she’s to wed – in a riotous encounter with JAN MOIR (oh, and she’s got a vow to make on Brexit too)
and cake -free zones. And how she loves his impressions of political figures such as W illiam Hague. Yet in an interview of long pauses, the longest is when I ask whether Phil does a good Speaker Bercow, too. ‘No!’ she eventually squeaks. I’ll take that as a yes. She says she feels better at 51 than she did at 31, while she could easily pass for 41. ‘I have become more confident with age. I’ve learnt to handle situations better. When I get things wrong, I learn from them.’
She believes that ‘ you are a product of your upbringing’ and sees herself as a voice of authentic - ity. Her working - class upbringing gave her a rich life experience far removed from the smooth progres - sion of most Tory posh boys.
One broadsheet newspaper recently reported that McV ey’s girlhood domestic chores involved polishing the family shoes and peeling potatoes, as if these were examples of some Cinderella existence. Her background certainly is extraordinary, but not for those reasons.
Her ‘poor, young’ parents Jimmy and Barbara both hailed from strict Irish Roman Catholic backgrounds and met when they were teenagers. They were unmarried and aged 22 and 18 when Esther was born. Unable to cope financially, they put her in a Barnardo’s home while they got themselves sorted out, starting a building business and later buying a tiny home. F our and a half years later, they brought Esther to come and live with them.
‘They visited me in the home. They always wanted me back ,’ she says. Although everyone assumed they were a married couple, they didn’t marry until Esther was 12 years old and about to attend fee -paying Belvedere School, where she ended up as head girl. ‘It ’s still the proudest day of my mother’s life,’ she says. The McVeys divorced eight years ago, yet Barbara still works for Jim’s company — and they go on holiday together with Esther and Phil. It all sounds rather weird.
‘It seems normal to us!’ says McVey, who remains close to both parents and shares her Cheshire constituency home with her father and Mr Davies.
What a crazy life! When she moved to London to study law in 1987, McVey worked as a waitress and saved up to buy a tiny flat in Shoreditch for £ 55,000, later purchasing the freehold for another £500. With her good looks and effer - vescent personality , she chose television over being a barrister and worked on GMTV with Eamonn Holmes and elsewhere.
Live broadcasting taught her to control her nerves, and today she still uses the techniques she learned on the breakfast sofa in the House of Commons.
There were men, of course there were. And showers of proposals.
Most of her boyfriends wanted to marry her, but Esther always turned them down. Why? P erhaps she had abandonment issues because of her childhood, I suggest.
‘Eh? No, I just didn’t want to marry any of them. I might have loved them but most of them wanted me to be a supportive wife and I wanted to be equal, to do my own thing.’
In the past, she has had relationships with former BBC Drama boss Mal Young and T ory MP Ed V aizey, who legend has it asked her to marry him nearly every month during their year-long courtship.
‘I always knew that they weren’t the right one and when I met Phil I knew that he was,’ she says.
Today she is the living embodiment of the social mobility she likes to champion, the daughter of a father who always told her: ‘Est, I don’t care if you don ’t succeed, so long as you give it your best shot.’
McVey could have stayed on the telly and chosen an easier life, perhaps becoming the darling of Merseyside. Instead, she chose a more difficult path and remains passionate about her calling.
‘For me, it is about how do we empower and enable people, not how do we keep them on benefits and close down their horizons,’ she says.