Esther McVey has been MP for Tatton since 2017, was MP for Wirral West before that, and in between built one of the more unusual careers on the Conservative benches, from television presenter to Secretary of State to the self styled scourge of woke. The story is more interesting than the record.

Born 1967; law degree; presented for GMTV and the BBC before entering politics. She won Wirral West in 2010, lost it in 2015, and came back two years later by taking George Osborne''s old seat of Tatton, which she has held through three elections including the 2024 collapse, when her majority fell to 1,136. Whatever else is true, she fights and she survives.

She also resigned on principle once, which not everyone does. In November 2018 she quit as Work and Pensions Secretary over Theresa May''s draft Brexit agreement, arguing it did not honour the referendum. The conviction was real even if the calculation was visible.

The trouble is what she did with the offices she held. Her time at Work and Pensions and as a welfare minister before it is remembered for benefit sanctions, the bedroom tax, and the move from disability living allowance to the tighter personal independence payment. In 2013 she was accused of misleading MPs over the bedroom tax and refused to apologise. In July 2018 she apologised to the Commons for inadvertently misleading members about the National Audit Office''s view of universal credit, after its head took the rare step of correcting her in an open letter. A minister who has to be corrected by the spending watchdog about her own programme is not on top of the brief.

The second act has been louder and emptier. Returned to government by Rishi Sunak in November 2023 as a minister without portfolio, she was billed as the minister for common sense with a brief to fight the culture war, and used it to muse about banning civil servants from wearing rainbow lanyards, a ban that did not in the end materialise. Before that she had taken a presenting job at GB News, co hosting with her husband, fellow Conservative MP Philip Davies, without seeking the required advice from the appointments watchdog, which found she had broken the rules; the channel was later found by Ofcom to have breached impartiality over an interview the pair conducted with the Chancellor.

McVey founded Blue Collar Conservatism and speaks fluently for the working class voters her party lost, and there is a real argument buried in that. She has also spent more energy on visibility and grievance than on the people her departments were supposed to serve. The career proves she can win attention. It has yet to prove she knows what to do with it.