Tory leadership contests have traditionally been dominated by middle-class men launching their campaigns in wood-panelled Westminster drawing rooms.
But for Esther McVey, the Liverpudlian former GMTV presenter who was one of the first MPs to declare her candidature, the campaign will be a more spit-and-sawdust affair: a countrywide tour of pubs where she will set out policies designed to entice working-class voters back to the party.
Ms McVey, who resigned from the Cabinet in November over Theresa May’s Brexit deal, will tomorrow launch Blue Collar Conservatism – a group dedicated to devising a compelling domestic policy agenda for ‘ordinary working people’ – as the vehicle for her tilt at No 10.
For Esther McVey, the Liverpudlian former GMTV presenter who was one of the first MPs to declare her candidature for Conservative leader, the campaign will be a more spit-and-sawdust affair
The former Pensions Secretary, 51, will then embark on a ten-date pub tour setting out policies such as boosting funding for the police and schools, scrapping HS2 and pegging the foreign aid budget to 2010 levels.
Aides are even discussing whether she should take a John Major-style soapbox to stand on as she addresses the crowds.
Ms McVey – who will start the tour at the end of the month at the Brown Cow in Bingley, Yorkshire – said: ‘Never have the politicians in Westminster seemed so remote from ordinary conversations in the pub.
'Brexit is a massive issue, but people want to talk about domestic stuff too’.
In a field of possibly 20 leadership candidates, the Tatton MP cuts a distinctive figure with her Scouse accent and media-trained poise.
It has earned her predictably sexist brickbats, including from her own side: last year, an ally of Chancellor Philip Hammond dismissively said: ‘All she knows how to do is blow-dry her hair.’
There was also widespread fury when Labour’s John McDonnell said in 2014 that activists in Liverpool had wanted to ‘lynch’ her as she tried to hold on to
