Hancock’s lesson for Sunak

I wonder if Rishi Sunak has nightmares about Ant and Dec bouncing into the cabinet room early one morning and, after a few suspenseful beats, declaring: “Boris and Liz have already gone. The third prime minister to be knocked out of I’m a Conservative Leader… Get Me Out of Here! in 2022 is…”

The gap between reality television and the surreal politics of Westminster has certainly narrowed this year. Last night, Matt Hancock finished third in the final of I’m a Celebrity, having survived 18 days. That’s not too shabby when you consider that Liz Truss was evicted from Number 10 after only 44. And – whatever crimes against good taste the former health secretary may have committed while he was in the jungle (bronze lamé hotpants spring to mind) – he did not actually capsize the entire UK economy as he faced six consecutive Bushtucker Trials.

When Hancock joined the camp on 10 November, it seemed touch and go that he would make it out alive: in particular, Boy George, androgynous pop superstar of the 1980s and now amateur pugilist, looked intent on decking the Conservative MP for his failures during the pandemic.

Back home, meanwhile, Hancock was in the Westminster sin bin for deserting the Commons and his constituents. He was suspended as a Tory MP. He has also been referred to the Cabinet Office by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments over his apparent breach of the ministerial code. 

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group sharply criticised his appearance on the show, for which he has reportedly trousered £400,000. Ofcom received more than 1,700 complaints. At the G20 summit in Bali, the PM himself said he “was disappointed when he went on the show… we’ve spent however long [on] all these challenges that the country faces – not just me.”

The fact remains, however, that Hancock ended up defying all expectations and made it to the final – by which point the bookies expected him to finish second to former Lioness Jill Scott (who was duly crowned Queen of the Jungle last night). Indeed, in his knockabout debrief with Ant and Dec, he looked ever so slightly crestfallen to have finished only in the bronze position. 

But not that crestfallen. This time, when he embraced his girlfriend and former adviser Gina Coladangelo – inadvertently recreating the famous CCTV image that forced his resignation in June 2021 – he looked like a man who knows that he has schemed his way to a second chance of some sort.

To be clear: coming third in a grotesque television show structured around the spectacle of cruelty is emphatically different from a full-blown political rehabilitation. One Tory minister texted me anxiously last night: “You don’t think he’ll be back in Cabinet, do you??” To which the answer is: not a chance, at least while Sunak is in charge. Stripped of the Tory whip, Hancock may not even be able to stand as Conservative candidate in West Suffolk, the seat he has represented since 2010.

Yet what his antics in the jungle have shown is that – yet again – the old rules of politics are being ripped up. There was a time when a disgraced cabinet minister was expected to perform quiet penance: the most remarkable example of which was Jack Profumo’s 40 years of quiet work on behalf of the East End charitable institution Toynbee Hall.

It is no longer penance that is expected of discredited or redundant politicians, but a readiness to submit themselves to gruesome public humiliation. And, on that front, Hancock was as ready as it gets, eating a sheep’s vagina, a camel’s penis and a cow’s anus, and downing a glass of blended worms. He was stung by a scorpion. Protesting that he had breached his own Covid guidelines because he “fell in love”, he was stopped in his tracks by stand-up comedian Babatúndé Aléshé who interjected “you were grabbing booty, bruv!” 

Yet, on his own terms at least, Hancock emerged a winner. While he was in the jungle, a sharp social media team was adroitly managing his Instagram and TikTok accounts. As the show’s ratings rose from eight million to 11 million, the pandemic villain slowly became an object of fascination and (for some) of grudging respect. It would be a huge exaggeration to say that he has been forgiven. 

But to his lengthy rap sheet has been appended a note to the effect that he may also be that oldest of archetypes for whom the British have a swooning weakness: a Good Sport. (Just to ensure that we all get the message, he is also reportedly due to appear in the forthcoming series of Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.)

Nor is Hancock by any means the first politician to have pursued this route. Ten years ago, Nadine Dorries also had the Conservative whip removed for appearing on the jungle show, and was obliged to apologise “fully and unreservedly” in 2013 for failing to declare her fee. But that did not prevent her from being appointed to the Cabinet in 2021, did it?

In 2014, Penny Mordaunt appeared on the ITV celebrity diving show Splash! Three years later, she too was appointed a cabinet minister, and this year stood for the Conservative leadership twice (she is presently Leader of the House of Commons).

The most important point to grasp is that such forays by politicians onto reality TV are no longer a sideshow; they are the show, or at least part of it. In the past two decades, politics has increasingly become a branch of the entertainment industry, governed by its culture, its style and capricious brutality. By this I do not mean that all politicians are thespians – for that has been true since the first caveman showily exerted power over another. The Roman emperors were performers par excellence, as were the Medici, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Tony Blair.

No: what we have witnessed in recent years is something much more profound. Donald Trump became president not on the basis of his business career – he is a multiple bankrupt, after all – but as a television celebrity, star of The Apprentice and occasional wrestler in the WWE ring. Boris Johnson’s ascent to the top job began with his appearances on Have I Got News For You? In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro made his name as a presidential contender by saying “yes” to knockabout television shows that other politicians wouldn’t even consider. If you want votes, first get ratings.

Of course, all three populist leaders are now out of power; and there is a school of thought that says their era is over. We can now all heave a sigh of relief, as sensible technocrats resume control of the world; the rule of calm, evidence-based policymaking is restored; and the toxins of theatrical nativism are being driven from the system by the antibodies of data and credentialism.

I am not so sure. First of all, there is no comforting pendulum in modern politics; no in-built tendency to swing back to the familiar after a period of madness. There is only what comes next, what follows in the sequence of political culture. And that is never straightforward to predict.

So – yes – the Republican red wave in the US mid-terms did not come to pass, Trump looks weaker than ever, and President Biden can, if he wishes, stand for a second term. But how confident are you that the forces of Trumpism are in full retreat? Does Ron DeSantis, the re-elected Governor of Florida (the state where, as he puts it, “woke goes to die”), not strike you as a new and serious threat to the Democrats – charismatic without being visibly deranged?

In France, it is true, Emmanuel Macron defeated the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen in April on her third attempt to win the presidency. But what is Le Pen up to, handing over the leadership of her far-right party to 27-year-old Jordan Bardella? A gamble, naturally – but hardly the act of a movement that is winding down and heading for extinction.

Need I remind you, furthermore, that, little over a month ago, the governing party in this country, led by eight cabinet members, was seriously considering recalling Johnson to the top job after the fall of Truss? The former PM certainly had the parliamentary support he needed to challenge Sunak in a ballot of party members, which he would probably have won. It was a close-run thing.

Since then, Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have worked round the clock to present themselves as a stable, businesslike duumvirate, clearing up the economic mess they inherited from Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, and seeking, in the Autumn Statement on 17 November, to renew the UK’s claim to fiscal credibility.

And look: this is certainly much better than what preceded it. A spreadsheet is always preferable to a skip fire. Sunak has a calm rationality and air of professionalism that mark him out conspicuously from his two immediate predecessors. What is striking, however, is that this most definitely isn’t enough.

Last week, I asked what ideals, dream or vision might be inspired by the words “Sunak’s Britain.” And I’m still waiting. One cabinet minister suggested to me: “Fairness. Stability. Prosperity”. This is fine, I suppose, but let’s be honest. It’s also pretty much the sort of platitude that would be written on a mood board by a session facilitator called Darren at an awayday for the regional management of Currys.

On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, had a go: “I think what people want from their government is – we’ve got a whole load of challenges thrown at us from international events, which are also faced by every other country in the world. I think what they want is a government that grips them, is honest and straightforward with people about the challenges we face, the choices we face, and then lays out to people, with some level of honesty, the decisions we’ve made, and where we can reasonably expect to get to.”

Again, who could dispute any of that? But the reason they couldn’t dispute it is not because of its incontestable power but because of its cosmic blandness. This was empty-carbs political rhetoric. It amounts to nothing more than: we’re all very professional, keep calm and carry on.

If that was ever enough, it certainly isn’t so in the age of permacrisis. Recovering from a pandemic, battered by the cost of living, wondering what Putin will do next, the public needs more in November 2022 than the calm language of the accountancy profession.

The Tory organism senses this is so at its most primal level – and is already panicking. Everywhere you turn, the party is disaggregating into factions, mutinous caucuses, WhatsApp-driven apocalypticism. The divisions over onshore wind farms, housing targets and immigration levels are real enough. Too many good MPs for comfort are announcing their departure (the loss of rising star Dehenna Davison, who captured Bishop Auckland – Labour since 1935 – in 2019, is especially pointed). 

The consequence is that the PM, once characterised as too wealthy to govern (which is not an insuperable problem) is starting to look weak (which is much more serious). “We don’t really know what Rishi stands for other than balancing the books,” says one northern MP. “There’s no governing principle or panache. You need both to win.”

That’s absolutely right. Sunak’s fatal flaw is his belief that being very able and very confident is enough in modern politics. What he lacks is the performance gene that forces a leader to rise above mere self-assurance and compels him to stretch out a hand to the anxious voter. And that involves taking risks, being more than a man in a suit, taking to the political stage with the audacity of a performer who understands that real power now courses through social networks as much as it resides in institutions, and that all politicians must at least be familiar with the grammar and cadence of modern entertainment culture.

Hancock’s relative success in the jungle should scarcely be an inspiration to Sunak – it would not, for instance, be a constitutional improvement to replace PMQs with Bushtucker Trials. But it should be a warning, too. The populist era is emphatically not over. Indeed, how could it be? How could the greatest transformation of political culture of the past 40 years ago have been so quickly reversed? 

Is Sunak really naive enough to believe that the old, comfortingly familiar order has been restored simply because Johnson and Trump have been seen off (for now)? What he should really be fretting about is this: what do I have to do to prevent the entire Tory camp from being evicted when Ant and Dec, and 46 million other voters, deliver their verdict in the real electoral final?