A journey to nowhere by Greg Hands, who makes a wasp at my window seem brave and brilliant

The chair of the Conservative Party likes to run into harm’s way at every opportunity – luckily, up until the next election, that’s his only job, writes Tom Peck

Put ’em up: Greg Hands, chairman of the Conservative Party, mounted a spirited defence of landmark by-election losses (PA)

I may have deployed this analogy more than once before but, on this occasion, as I type, there really and truly is a dying wasp flying up my window. It gets to the top, it stumbles to the bottom, it goes again. It will do this on loop because a wasp’s brain runs on instinct alone. It is born with all the intelligence it will ever have. It is biologically incapable of learning.

And, as I regard this wasp, on the other side of the room is the television, on which I am tracking the movements of Tory Party chair Greg Hands as he scuttles between the broadcast studios, explaining how, actually, these two most recent historic Tory by-election defeats are actually bad news for Keir Starmer. ITV. BBC Breakfast. Radio 4. Top. Bottom. Go again.

It’s especially unfortunate for Mr Hands as at least the wasp will have the dignity of death quite soon. Hands, meanwhile, has had to do this brave and brilliant journey to nowhere for what feels like at least once a month for the last year. And given that his party cannot seem to last more than few weeks without another one of its MPs having to step down in disgrace for one reason or another – and if the words “Madrid hotel room” mean anything to you, you’ll know there’s surely another one coming – he is still trapped in his own very public doom loop, albeit you would have to think, not for too much longer.