What have we done to deserve Matt Hancock?

What about conservative politicians? How do they manage to not only escape the consequences of their various misdeeds, but also profit from them?

Boris Johnson, who was forced out of office in disgrace, is now collecting obscene speaking fees (£315,000 for a 30-minute speech and “fireside chat” at the Colorado Board of Insurance Agents and Brokers). Suella Braverman, who had to resign as Home Secretary on October 19 over the use of her personal email to send sensitive information, was reinstated by Rishi Sunak six days later.

Gavin Williamson, sacked as defense secretary by Theresa May for leaking National Security Council discussions and as education secretary by Johnson for incompetence, is back in Sunak’s cabinet – at least for now. It remains to be seen whether his vile tirade against Wendy Morton, the former chief whip, for not inviting him to the Queen’s funeral is enough to get him sacked for a third time.

And then there’s Matt Hancock, who now earns £400,000 for appearing in ITV I’m a celebrity… Get me out of here! Above Channel 4 the creators of SAS: He who dares wins are said to be less excited, sun reports because Hancock has already signed on as one of their contestants on (and begun filming) a series that won’t air until next year. Alas, this is what happens when you make a deal with a complete charlatan.

Lest we forget, it has only been 17 months since Hancock was forced to resign as health secretary for breaching the draconian social distancing rules he imposed on the nation during the Covid pandemic. He did this by having an affair with his assistant, Gina Coladangelo. He’s not a celebrity. He is a disgraced former minister who betrayed the trust not only of his wife and three children, but also of the entire country.

There was a time when Hancock’s behavior would have banished him from public life forever. Remember John Profumo? In 1963 he had to resign as Secretary of War because he had an affair with a model and spent the rest of his life volunteering for an East End charity to mend his ways. We live in a very different age. Politicians today seem to rise and prosper not by being honorable, good at their job or figures of real substance, but by sycophancy, self-promotion and utter shamelessness.

Hancock is a classic example. A creator of David Cameron and George Osborne, he won his West Suffolk constituency in 2010 and soon used a parliamentary question to include a book he had written about the financial crash (Masters of Nothing). Cameron gave him his first ministerial post in 2012, when he was 33. Asked to respond to accusations that the Conservative Party is full of brazen career politicians with little real-world experience, Hancock was cheeky in an interview with Spectator to compare with Winston Churchill and William Pitt, who both took office young.

He was promoted quickly—too quickly to make a real impact in any of the five different positions he held over the next four years. On the day the Tory MPs were away, a colleague caused much hilarity by saying: “Anyone trying to lick George Osborne’s behind should be careful because if you go too far you’ll find that the soles of Matt Hancock’s shoes they are bothering you.’

[See also: Has Gavin Williamson’s luck finally run out?]

In January 2018, May promoted him to Cabinet as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where he sparked derision by becoming the first MP to launch his own smartphone app. Seven unremarkable months later, she made him health secretary. As a measure of his capacity for self-delusion, he sought the leadership of the Tory party when May resigned the following year, presenting himself as the “candidate of the future”, but came sixth in the first round with just 20 MPs backing him. Then he withdrew.

Johnson, the winner, kept him on as health secretary, and he was still there when the Covid pandemic hit in March 2020. Hancock boasts of being involved in “rolling out the fastest vaccine program in the world”. He fails to mention the government’s appalling lack of preparedness for such a pandemic; his disastrous transfer of infected patients from hospitals to care homes despite his claim to have cast a “protective ring” around the latter; the futility of the £37 billion track and trace scheme he presided over; and spending billions more on personal protective equipment, much of which was sourced from Conservative cronies and proved useless (a former pub owner in Hancock’s constituency was inexplicably awarded a £40m contract to test vials).

An estimated 200,000 British citizens have died from Covid-19 – giving the country one of the highest death rates in the world. In a text to former aide Dominic Cummings, Johnson called Hancock “totally hopeless.”

Then came the Hancock affair, his resignation and the breakup of his marriage. Most politicians would keep a low profile for a decent period after such a fall from grace, but not Hancock. Just a few months later he was back, boasting a UN job offer (withdrawn), giving interviews, negotiating a book deal and being photographed swimming on Hyde Park’s icy Serpentine Lido.

In both Conservative Party leadership races this year, Hancock backed Sunak, no doubt hoping for an advantage. “Few have worked more closely with him than I have. He has good judgment, seriousness of purpose and good character,” he gushed in a typically cheesy but self-promoting tweet. But he failed to secure a place in Sunak’s cabinet and the new prime minister apparently ignored him when he greeted cheering crowds outside Conservative Party headquarters after his election.

Undeterred, Hancock is now pursuing a different course. He follows the notable examples of Nadine Dorries and George Galloway by gaining fame through reality TV (95 percent of the public have heard of him, although only 16 percent like him).

He strives to portray his appearance I’m a celebrity like some good, almost heroic deed. It will trade the comforts of home for the “extreme conditions of the Australian outback”, he says. He will use his appearances to promote his dyslexia campaign. He will give a portion of the proceeds to a hospice in Suffolk, although he apparently failed to say how much. “Our job as politicians is to go where the people are – not sit in the ivory towers of Westminster,” he argued.

No one is fooled by such self-serving nonsense. Not his constituency association, which accused him of a “serious error of judgement”. Not the Conservative Party, which withdrew the whip. Not Sunak, who is “disappointed” that Hancock has abandoned his constituents in the midst of such a severe cost-of-living crisis. And not the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, which said: “Our families have been torn apart by the actions of Matt Hancock and turning on the TV to see him parade around as a joke is disgusting.”

In the event, millions of viewers tuned into the launch of the new series on Sunday night (November 6) to discover that Hancock was still not on set. He will appear in future episodes. Hopefully, when he does, this epitome of the vacuous, self-serving modern politician will be removed from the program in short order. And we hope his Suffolk constituents will do exactly the same at the next election.

[See also: Oh Boris Johnson, how far you have fallen]