She subsequently, with her MP husband, jointly hosted weekly programmes on GB News titled Friday[2] and Saturday Morning with Esther and Philip; she also regularly wrote for the Daily Express.

[10] McVey was a co-presenter of the summer holiday Children's BBC strand But First This in 1991, and subsequently presented and produced a wide range of programmes, co-hosting GMTV,[11] BBC1's science entertainment series How Do They Do That?,[12] 5's Company, The Heaven and Earth Show, Shopping City, BBC2's youth current affairs programme Reportage and Channel 4's legal series Nothing But The Truth with Ann Widdecombe.

[18] McVey joined GB News in 2021 to present a weekly show with her husband, titled Saturday Morning with Esther and Phillip.

In September 2023, Ofcom said that GB News had breached impartiality rules during an interview that McVey and Davies carried out with Jeremy Hunt on their Saturday morning show earlier that year.

[19] At the 2005 general election, McVey stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Wirral West, coming second with 39.9% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Stephen Hesford.

[25] In December 2013, she was formally reprimanded for using House of Commons notepaper and postage to electioneer for the Conservative Party; she apologised and repaid the £300 costs.

[33] In 2015, speaking to Robert Peston of ITV, McDonnell defended his comments by saying that he was "simply report[ing] what was shouted out at a public meeting".

On the same day as his "lynch" remarks, in a debate in the House of Commons, McDonnell criticised McVey for playing the victim and proceeded to call her a "stain of inhumanity".

[35][36][37] After losing her seat, McVey took up the post of chair of the British Transport Police Authority from November 2015, on a four-year contract.

[40] In April 2017, McVey was selected to succeed George Osborne as the Conservative candidate for the seat of Tatton at the snap 2017 general election.

[43] On 8 January 2018, McVey was appointed as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, a post she held until 15 November 2018 when she resigned over the Brexit deal.

The Guardian wrote: "Tens of thousands of ESA claimants will receive back-payments of £5,000–£20,000 as a result of what MPs have called a series of 'avoidable' mistakes.

[52] In March 2019, she was criticised,[53] after tweeting a widely discredited claim made in a 2014 newspaper opinion column about the UK, along with other EU states, being forced to join the Euro from 2020, before later deleting it.

[54] In May 2019, McVey announced her intention to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party when Theresa May resigned, claiming that she already had "enough support" to stand.

[43] Later that month, McVey launched Blue Collar Conservatives, as part of her leadership campaign, with MPs such as Scott Mann, Iain Duncan Smith and her partner Philip Davies in attendance.

She was criticised by the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, Eric Pickles, for breaking anti-lobbying rules within the Ministerial Code in accepting the job at GB News while she was still the housing minister.

[65][66] In May 2024, McVey said that she wanted to tackle "left-wing politically correct woke warriors" in the public sector and suggested that civil servants could be banned from wearing rainbow lanyards.

[69] McVey subsequently returned to the backbenches after not being offered roles in either the Shadow frontbench teams of Rishi Sunak or Kemi Badenoch.

[77] On 19 September 2020, McVey married Davies in a private ceremony at Westminster, in Parliament's historic St Mary Undercroft chapel.