Esther McVey recently quit her job as Work & Pensions Secretary and has headed back to the backbenches, you can see her first you tube video about her first day back, below.
However, McVey hasn’t been holding back on Twitter since she left Cabinet.
After her resignation, many people pointed out the situation that would face Universal Credit claimants if they were to voluntarily give up a job.
One twitter user, Paul Treloar, asked: “If you leave a job voluntarily under Universal Credit, your first sanction lasts for 91 days, second time around it’s 182 days and third time, a whopping 1,095 days (or three years. Wonder whether Esther McVey1 will see her MP’s salary reduced for quitting her job?”
She responded to one question with “By resigning, my salary has been halved.”
McVey now has to battle on with a meagre £77,379 salary, as you can imagine, that didn’t go well with some on Twitter. However, she also received a fair share of support for her decision to leave front line politics.
On Twitter user, Robert Doig said: “So you do not have 6 weeks of destitution you have your extremely well paid job, your subsidised food and drink at work, subsidised travel to and from work and a subsidised second home bought for you…… yes sounds just like being in Universal Credit.”
One user on the social media platform joked: “Halved to £75k as an MP mate… hardly straight to ramen noodles is it.”
One person had an interesting plan for what McVey could do with the spare cash she has saved up, saying: “I think you should donate the extra money you earned for being a cabinet minister to the food banks the DWP are forcing people to use. Many of whom work full time and can’t make ends meet.”
A Lib Dem councillor tweeted :It would be lovely if most of us could afford to do this Esther. You should quit as an MP. You have brought unprecedented levels of misery to so many people. And you continue to mock them. How much do you claim for weekly groceries off the tax payer?”