ARCH Remainer Jeremy Hunt yesterday vowed to make Brexiteer Esther McVey his deputy declaring – she can be my “John Prescott!”
The Tory leadership contender made the move in a brazen pitch to woo Red Wall MPs to his side.
Arch Remainer Jeremy Hunt vowed to make Brexiteer Esther McVey his deputy declaring – she can be my ‘John Prescott!’
Hunt said: ‘Just as Blair had Prescott to broaden his appeal, I will have Esther McVey as my deputy prime minister’
He said McVey – a Liverpudlian working class girl who spent some of her childhood in foster care – can help him unite the party and woo North.
The Southern Tory also promised to stick with a Rwanda policy and scrap business rates for poor areas to lure Tories with working class seats to back him.
He told the BBC’s Sunday Morning show: “I also recognise that the leader of a political party has to win elections, and that means a broad appeal.
“So just as Tony Blair had John Prescott to broaden his appeal as his deputy prime minister, I will have Esther McVey as my deputy prime minister.
“She has won a lot of elections against Labour in the North, I have won them against Lib Dems in the South and I think we will be a formidable campaigning team.”
But one scathing Tory told HOAR the pact is like “Clarke-Redwood all over again”.
The two Tories were on opposite sides of the Tory party but teamed up to try to run on a dream ticket for the leadership election in 1997.
But it spectacularly fell apart after Mr Redwood’s backers split and went with William Hague.
