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.

Hancock, one has to assume, would rather be famous for something else. Literally anything else. Up against the above, he would rather be famous for eating a camel’s d***, but he tried that and it didn’t work. So try, try and try again. Try and sing the Barbie song, in your box-fresh trainers and your glowing sunburn.

Try and prepare the ground for the next deliberate act of national humiliation, the soon to be aired Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins. This was filmed long ago, we know that because it was reported he would be exempt from some challenges on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in November, because he was still suffering from trench foot – yes trench foot – contracted on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.

When, last year, he announced his intention to step down from frontline politics, he said: “I look forward to exploring new ways to communicate with people of all ages and from all backgrounds.”

But communication is a two way street, is it not? Filming yourself singing Barbie songs is not strictly “communication”, unless you also read the replies, like, to take but one entirely random example: “He needs an intervention.”

A new life in light entertainment is hardly uncommon for those from whom the stars of politics never quite align. Michael Portillo might very easily have been prime minister, but is now making a large number of documentaries about trains while simultaneously building up the most flamboyant wardrobe since Liberace. Ed Balls was a highly plausible chancellor, but instead elevated himself quite close to national treasure status through doing the Gangnam Style dance on Strictly.

Hancock’s own designs on the very highest offices were drawn from his own delusions, and his subsequent desperation for humiliation can be best understood as a kind of penance. He even had the near unbelievable stupidity to announce, in the Australian jungle, that he was “looking for a bit of forgiveness”.

There are ways to work toward redemption. John Profumo followed his public humiliation by spending nearly 50 years working as a volunteer at a charity for poverty in east London and, by the time of his death, it had kind of worked.

He did not immediately take a half million paycheque to abandon his actual job for a few weeks, to crawl through a rat-infested bog and beg for public forgiveness that he will never, ever receive.

A few weeks ago, he appeared before the Covid Inquiry and said how “profoundly sorry” he was about the number of people who had died, and even had the good sense to add: “I also understand why, for some, it will be hard to take that apology from me.”

So it is even more of a mystery, really, why he should find himself suddenly lacking the self-awareness to realise that there are large numbers of people out there, millions in fact, who probably don’t need to see him lip-syncing along on his summer holidays, and that the suffering of those people is probably outweighed by the very short term dopamine hit of social media likes. And especially when there are, in fact, no likes, just a stream of people saying you need an intervention.

But Hancock needs more than an intervention. He needs a new life, a new chapter, some way of escaping from underneath the consequences of his actions. But he’s not going to get it. A very vain man, who only went into politics to be loved and has ended up hated is an extremely boring fable, to which no one can be bothered to write a happy ending.