The disgraced former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, one Matthew John David Hancock, has lost the Conservative Party whip for agreeing to take part in trash TV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, The Guardian reports.
Tory chief whip Simon Hart is quoted as saying, “Following a conversation with Matt Hancock, I have considered the situation and believe this is a matter serious enough to warrant suspension of the whip with immediate effect”.
The dictionary definition of a celebrity is someone who is famous, especially in areas of entertainment such as films, music, writing, or sport. Unless politics has become a branch of the entertainment business, classifying Hancock as a celebrity is a tad far-fetched, even though politics has previously been described as show business for ugly people.
Your ‘umble scribe would contend that Hancock is no celebrity. However, what he does have is notoriety, particularly from his term of office as health secretary. In June 2021, after it was shown he had breached COVID-19 social distancing restrictions by kissing and embracing an aide, Gina Coladangelo, in his Whitehall office, Hancock resigned as Health Secretary, having been caught not only cheating on his wife, but also breaking his own social distancing rules. At the time Ms Coladangelo was a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care. She was also an old college friend of Hancock’s from his time studying PPE at Exeter College, Oxford.
However, Ms Coladangelo’s appointment to the DHSC is not the only example of Hancock’s cronyism. There was the revelation of his ownership of shares in a family company used by the NHS, not to mention the award of an NHS contract to a neighbour. Furthermore, Hancock is the member of parliament for the West Suffolk constituency, which includes Newmarket, capital of the country’s horse-racing business. One of the reasons the pandemic took such a strong hold in the country was the delay in locking the country down, which allowed such superspreader events as the traditional March Cheltenham Festival to take place.
Of course, Hancock is not the first MP to be lured onto I’m A Celebrity. There was of course the notoriously useless Right Dishonourable Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, one Nadine Vanessa Dorries. Dorries also famously lost the whip for appearing on the show (where she famously ate ostrich anus in the bushtucker challenge. Ed.), apparently for committing the ultimate discourtesy of not informing the whips’ office of her absence from Halitosis Hall. However, this disciplinary action did not do much to dent her career prospects as she was subsequently and inexplicably elevated to the cabinet position of Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
Come the next election, will the good burghers of West Suffolk decide that Hancock belongs on a show entitled He’s A Calamity… Get Him Out Of Here!?
Update 5/11/22: Hancock’s decision to take part in the show and leave his constituents without parliamentary representation while he earns a fat fee – rumoured in the media to be £350-400K – in addition to his £84,144 p.a. salary as an MP has not gone down well with some constituents, The Guardian reports.