On the 9th of November, Matt Hancock entered the jungle as he made his debut on ‘I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!’. Hancock initially rose to political fame through his role as health secretary at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Having been forced to resign due to his affair with aide Gina Coladangelo, which broke the very social distancing guidelines that he put in place, Hancock has since just sat as the conservative MP for West Suffolk. Now stripped of the whip, condemned by Sunak and covered in bugs, Hancock’s decision to go on the programme appears irresponsible, out of touch and frankly insulting.

Despite Hancock’s excitement about entering the jungle, his recent remarks appear entirely miscalculated considering the increasingly harsh socio-economic conditions that his constituents are facing. Indeed, his playful comment that ‘survival in the jungle is a good metaphor for the world I work in’ falls flat when considering predictions that as many as 56 per cent of UK households will fall into poverty by January 2023 – many of his constituents could only wish that they could understand survival quite so metaphorically.

As such, Hancock’s entry to the jungle has riled many of those that voted him into office. As one of his constituents charitably sums it up ‘the man is an idiot’. Perhaps then all is not what it seems, surely no MP in their right mind could abandon their constituents at a time of economic crisis for a bout of cheap fame and large paycheck and expect to pull the wool over the nation’s eyes? Sadly, this is exactly what seems to have happened.

Indeed, Hancock has defended his stint on I’m A Celebrity stating that it will allow him to ‘engage with voters’, allowing them to see him ‘warts and all’ – flying 10,270 miles from your constituency to be reportedly paid around £400,000 to appear on a reality TV show seems to be a very odd and profitable way of going about this. Indeed, the stark contrast between the nearly 25% of adults who feel unable to heat their homes this winter, and Hancock’s three-week stint away from work in the Australian summertime utterly exposes the ridiculousness of his excuse. I’m not sure many members of his constituency will look very favourably on his ‘warts’ from the damp cold of a British winter.

Alongside this, Hancock has attempted to justify his stint on the programme by claiming that he wants to ‘use this incredible platform to raise awareness’ of dyslexia. Labour frontbencher Peter Kyle rightly raised the incredulity this claim. Ultimately, Hancock’s appearance seems to be driven by the rumoured £400,000 paycheck, potential for a new wave of publicity and an attempt to rehabilitate his image.

Problematically though, Hancock’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity will, for many, provide a day-in-day-out reminder of the man who: rapidly discharged thousands of patients into care homes, a policy that has since been ruled ‘unlawful’; whose failed Track and Trace Covid app cost the taxpayer nearly £12m; who forced to resign after breaking his own covid guidelines, and finally who is now capitalising on this previous political exposure at another time of national need.

Perhaps, some might say, the saving grace of this whole ordeal is that we can exercise our democratic right. We can phone in every night and gleefully vote for him to attempt to swallow a fish’s eyeball. However, this cross contamination between a political exercise (voting) and an entertainment platform points to a wider socio-political problem. As politicians increasingly seem to overlap with the entertainment world, we are seeing an increase in  “personality leaders”.

With the rise of Johnson and Trump’s popularity facilitated by shows such as ‘Have I Got News for You’ and ‘The American Apprentice’ this crossover can be seen as increasingly problematic. Indeed, Johnson and Trump’s ability to market their personality both accelerated them into office and allowed them to slip away more easily from the scandals and corruption that otherwise marked their tenures. Hancock’s entrance into the jungle can be seen as a litmus test for how we understand personality to affect political legacy. Indeed, if a politician as disgraced and uncharismatic as Hancock can win back the approval of the British people by simply swallowing a few spiders, the fate of Britain’s democratic system appears far more troublesome than some might care to admit…

Read more from Comment here:

The World at Eight Billion – The Challenges of Population

The Philosophy of Post-Abortion Regret

News Coverage of the Queen