The tragedy of Matt Hancock

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Matt Hancock is a tragic determine, within the casual sense of the phrase. All the pieces he does is drenched in cringe. Each useless try to thrust himself again into the political limelight – following his fall from grace in the course of the pandemic over a lockdown-breaking affair – finally ends up being a spectacular miscalculation, a profound failure of self-awareness. His choice to go on this 12 months’s I’m a Movie star… Get Me Out of Right here!, dropping the Conservative whip within the course of, is his gorgeous pièce de résistance.

This is the reason it’s so onerous, for me a minimum of, to get indignant at him. Regardless that he’s, partially, chargeable for locking us all down in 2020. Regardless that he was a much bigger lockdown hypocrite than most. (At one level he instructed {couples} who lived aside both to maneuver in collectively or do with out intercourse.) To get indignant at Hancock now seems like kicking a child, in a turtleneck. He’s going into the I’m a Celeb jungle already a nationwide laughing inventory, earlier than he’s a lot as set eyes on his first kangaroo penis or taken a bathe in his pants.

In some ways, he’s simply probably the most absurd product of our rotten, pre-populist political tradition – the Blairite-to-Cameroon period that so many nonetheless lengthy for. He did PPE at Oxford. He was an economist on the Financial institution of England. He was George Osborne’s protégé. He acts like that boss who needs to be your mate. He seems like he was as soon as the president of the Travis fanclub. His technocratic pedigree is impeccable. In the meantime, he additionally believes in nothing, was a serial bungler when in workplace, appears to care extra about movie star shine than public service, and has all of the widespread contact of an 18th-century debutante.

So, let’s all take pleasure in Matt Hancock’s time within the jungle. It could be impolite to not. However let’s additionally ponder how somebody like him ever ended up on the frontline of British politics within the first place.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Comply with him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_