Matt Hancock beware – politicians have a patchy track record on reality TV

Bar some honourable exceptions, it’s just clowning in the twilight – often pitifully, writes Sean O’Grady

Matt Hancock and a kangaroo (Yui Mok/Belfast Zoo/PA)

You get the distinct impression with Matt Hancock that he’s basically giving up on his political career, which is understandable, but also not understandable.

It’s quite understandable in the sense that this career really hasn’t really recovered from his office affair; and his messy resignation, when Boris Johnson wanted to keep him on only to be able to use him as human shield later on, didn’t add to Hancock’s prestige. He does look dead in the water – but just contemplate the unlikely recent comebacks by Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak.

Even with all the unprecedented ministerial churn during our current permacrisis, though, Hancock never got the call to return to the cabinet, or even the government. No sinecures were offered, so far as we know, and his latest attempt at a return as chair of the Commons Treasury Committee has also flopped. As if in a fit of particularly self-destructive pique, Hancock has taken himself off to the jungle to make a fool of himself in I’m a Celebrity… Get me out of Here! He’s been suspended from the Conservative parliamentary party, and his constituency party in Suffolk is openly contemptuous.