Matt Hancock’s attempts to rehabilitate his image are going as well as expected

A new memoir and some television airtime have put the former health secretary back in the spotlight, writes Sean O'Grady, for better or worse

Project Hancock presses on to Celebrity SAS... who dares wins (PA)

How is “Project Hancock” coming along? The short answer must be “as well as can be expected”. Matt Hancock managed to survive his time in the jungle and succeeded in at least opening a public debate into whether he should be forgiven or at least understood. Last week he had his long-anticipated parliamentary debate on dyslexia, unusually well-attended for private members’ business on a Friday.

It’s fair to say he didn’t use his time on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to push the issues around dyslexia overmuch, and seemed more intent on refashioning his image. The ex-junglemates have apparently omitted him from their WhatsApp group, so he maybe didn’t persuade them that he’s not what he seems. On balance, he emerged a fair bit richer and with his reputation still hanging in the balance, along with this political career. One poll suggested 81 per cent of people said it has not improved his reputation, with 11 per cent of people saying it had done so, which is progress, of sorts. That said, the families of the Covid-19 bereaved have been understandably appalled by Hancock making money from his failures.

The next stage in his attempted rehabilitation is a volume of “pandemic diaries”, which appear not to have been complied contemporaneously, as is normal with diaries. The pre-publication extracts have veered between ick and crude self-vindication in a fairly unattractive way, even for a politician towards the nadir of their career. The most cringey passage concerns Hancock describing the conversation with wife Martha about his affair as “the most difficult of my life”. Did anyone think it was going to be a treat for all concerned?

The diaries also appear to be a fairly clumsy attempt to get his side of Covid story in first, before the full public inquiry led by a judge gets under way. It’s unlikely to divert the inquiry from its legitimate lines of inquiry, and if anything alerts them to Hancock’s lines of defence. These basically involve blaming everyone else for mistakes. Thus, Dominic Cummings – or his “acolytes” – is given the responsibility for leaking the second lockdown; infected staff bringing the coronavirus into care homes; and Boris Johnson for everything else. There may be some truth in Hancock’s claims, but his error is in seeming to want to escape all accountability. He was, after all, called “totally f***ing hopeless” by his prime minister, and had responsibility for the race to a vaccine taken from him and given to Nadhim Zahawi and Kate Bingham.

From what he has said about wanting to continue as MP for West Suffolk, it seems as though Matt Hancock is attempting to create a new hybrid creature, part-politician, part-reality TV star, in the name of bringing parliament closer to the people and revealing how “human” politicians really are.

It’s a brave mission, and arguably has merits, but Matt Hancock is perhaps not the ideal raw material for such an experiment. Meanwhile, Project Hancock presses on to Celebrity SAS. Who dares wins, they say.