GB News Host Esther McVey Quits To Take Up New Cabinet Role
Esther McVey presented a show on GB News with her husband. Screengrab / GB News
GB News presenter Esther McVey declared her immediate departure from the network late Tuesday as she takes up her ministerial role as Common Sense Tsar.
McVey, who is MP for Totten in Cheshire, was assigned a Cabinet position on Monday by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his government reshuffle. It is not certain what McVey’s responsibilities will be as yet, as she is appointed minister without portfolio, but it is expected she will be tasked with tackling “woke” issues.
In August 2022, she began co-hosting a show on GB News with her husband, Philip Davies, also a sitting Conservative MP. Earlier in the year, it was determined that the duo had violated Ofcom’s impartiality regulations during an interview with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
Discussing her exit, Esther told GB News that it was “far from an easy decision.”
She explained her new role: “Yesterday, the Prime Minister asked me to join his Government to help bring about the common sense changes the country needs.”
To understand “common sense changes” a look back to December 2022 sees McVey as one of 40 Tory MPs endorsing a Conservative Way Forward report, suggesting that eliminating diversity and inclusion officer roles could save over £500 million and reclaim a million working days “lost” to diversity training. The report also accused the Government of funding “politically motivated” and “anti-British” campaigns, urging a review of expenditure on “woke” causes.
McVey, known for her right-wing stance, also set up the Blue Collar Conservatives caucus with Sir Iain Duncan Smith in 2019, focusing on free speech and tax cuts.
The MP was a vocal opponent of Covid lockdowns and frequently attacked the concept on her GB News show. McVey described lockdowns as “Communist-style control over the public” and leads a group scrutinising pandemic response and recovery, supported by Collateral Global, a lockdown-sceptical organisation.
