Esther McVey blames a ‘cabal of lefties’ at GMTV for her feud with Lorraine Kelly, a friend said
Tory leadership longshot Esther McVey blames a ‘cabal of lefties’ including current Labour MP Gloiria Del Piero for her TV feud with Lorraine Kelly, it has emerged.
The accusation comes after McVey’s stuttering leadership campaign took another blow yesterday, when she was unable to remember the location of an airport she identified as a waste of foreign aid money.
She was only to say it was on ‘one of the continents abroad’.
The MP, who served as Work and Pensions Secretary last year, was publicly snubbed by the usually sunny Lorraine Kelly on air this week.
The pair used to work together in the early 2000s when McVey was a GMTV presenter.
McVey was interviewed on Good Morning Britain on Monday, and afterwards GMB cut live to the Lorraine studio.
Piers Morgan asked Lorraine whether she remembered McVey from their ITV days to which Kelly merely replied ‘Yep. Yes I do,’ before quickly launching into a plug for her show.
Earlier this week the usually sunny Lorraine could barely bring herself to acknowledge having worked with McVey
There was an awkward laugh in both studios before Morgan added: ‘Ooh if looks could kill.’
The feud has since snowballed, with some suggesting the Scottish TV presenter disapproves of the Liverpudlian MP’s stance on LGBT rights, and Fiona Phillips claiming relations between the two women soured when the MP wrongly claimed she had been promoted to present GMTV permanently.
Now however, according to a friend quoted in the Express, the hundred-to-one outsider for the Tory leadership believes it is all a Labour plot.
Former GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips (l) and the show’s former political correspondent Gloria Del Piero (r) were named as members of the left wing cabal
Kate Garraway, pictured here presenting an edition of GMTV with Eammon Holmes, completed the triumvirate blamed by a source close to McVey for the falling out with Lorraine Kelly
A friend of Ms McVey told the paper: ‘GMTV was like a cabal of Lefties with Fiona Phillips, Gloria de Piero and Kate Garrawy.’
Former GMTV host Fiona Phillips, a Labour supporter, was offered a peerage and a job as a health minister by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Gloria De Piero, now a Labour MP, was a political correspondent for GMTV.
And former GMTV presenter Kate Garraway, who has filled in for Lorraine Kelly, is married to one-time Labour spin doctor Derek Draper.
The claims of a ‘Labour cabal’ come after a difficult day for the former morning breakfast television presenter.
In a rambling discussion about mis-spent foreign aid, with Iain Dale on LBC radio, Ms McVey said: ‘We know some of that money is not spent, as there is a rush at the end of the year to spend it.
‘We know places have their own, er, whether it’s space programmes, we know actually ports have been built and actually the runways are in the wrong direction cause of the winds, what we are saying is, there are vulnerable…’
Her interviewer interrupts to ask: ‘Where has that happened’
She went on: ‘There are vulnerable people…’
He asked again: ‘Where has that happened’
To which she replied: ‘Er, well, well, it’s in, one of the, er, er, er, th, continents abroad.’
Tory MP Alan Duncan replied to the video, shared by LBC, to say: ‘Total rubbish. The runway in question is in St Helena. I was the DFID Minister who built it – completed early, under budget, and despite difficult wind conditions it operates well. It fulfils our legal obligations to a UK overseas territory and so is not “foreign aid”.’