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Saturday 12 November 2022

Stick to the shallow end



I'm A Celebrity: Matt Hancock asks for forgiveness

Matt Hancock became emotional as he told his I'm A Celebrity campmates that what he is "really looking for is a bit of forgiveness".

But while Hancock expressed regret over breaking Covid guidelines, he defended his overall record as health secretary...

The MP has been criticised for entering the jungle while parliament is sitting.

Hancock, who had the Tory whip suspended after joining the ITV series, was forced to resign as health secretary in June 2021 after CCTV footage emerged of him kissing aide Gina Colangelo while social distancing guidelines were in place.


A bit of forgiveness? This guy was a Cabinet minister. 

Not a new story of course, but to my mind it's mildly unsettling. We already know how shallow political actors can be, but Hancock appears to demonstrate how important it is to be as shallow as the media. As if there is no point aiming above the media, above the nonsense and the clickbait. Absolutely no point.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

The sort of people we're dealing with here:

https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-gina-colangelo

Sam Vega said...

Exactly so. Politicians used to pretend to be more intelligent, better read, and more moral than they really were. Those were the qualities which people thought politicians and leaders ought to have.

Apart from niche performances like Boris with his daft Latin quotes, that no longer pays off. Voters are more used to emotional human stories of loss, heartbreak, sin, and redemption. Nobody cares whether politicians are more competent; what matters is that we can relate to them. We've all met pushy ambitious women like Liz Truss, and the ageing "top guy" like Hunt. And every big organisation has a hapless ridiculous man-child like Hancock.

A K Haart said...

James - so often, the more we know about their private lives, the less suitable they seem to be for the role.

Sam - that's right, we've all met them. Yet we don't vote for the rarer types who are competent enough to do the job as we seem to know it should be done.