Matt Hancock thinks he can humiliate his way to redemption – he is mistaken

Horrified viewers suggested he needed an intervention after seeing him lip-syncing to a ‘Barbie’ song on TikTok. But Matt Hancock needs more than that, says Tom Peck. He needs a new life or a new chapter, but he’s not going to get it

There are ways to work toward redemption. Filming yourself singing ‘Barbie’ songs for TikTok is not one of them (TikTok/Warner Bros)

Can any of us know what Matt Hancock wants us to think? What reaction is it that he is hoping for, when he videos himself walking along some sort of tropical beach, lip-syncing to the song “I am Kenough” from the Barbie movie, and uploading it to TikTok?

What is it that he is trying to achieve? Is it part of the Hancock-led attempt at the Hancock “rebrand”? It’s a funny word, “rebrand”. To be branded, even now, involves having a permanent mark into your flesh with a scalding iron. “Rebranding” is not therefore meant to be easy, or even possible. To even attempt it is to open up to truly torturous pain, yet Hancock is trying to inflict it on the rest of us.

There are, and there always will be, two things that Hancock is most famous for. The first is evacuating untested hospital patients into care homes and ignoring warnings that to do so would set off a wave of infections and deaths among society’s most vulnerable people. The second is for going on TV and telling people not to sleep with people from outside their household, at the same time as conducting an affair with a member of his staff, in front of the CCTV cameras in his own office.