It is a dark day for comedy indeed. After a dozen years of trying (and failing) to become PM, Matt Hancock has today announced he is quitting parliament and will stand down at the next election, just 24 hours after launching his ‘pandemic diaries’. Only nine days ago, his spokesman was furiously insisting to reporters that Hancock had ‘no intention of standing down or stepping away from politics.’
But now the lothario legislator suggests that his recent experiences on I’m a Celebrity have changed his views on politics, musing in his farewell letter to Rishi Sunak that ‘there was a time when I thought the only way to influence the public debate was in parliament’ but that now ‘I’ve realised there’s far more it than that.’ As a minor media celebrity perhaps? He wrote in a lengthy statement:
I have increasingly come to believe that for a healthy democracy we must find new ways to reach people – especially those who are disengaged with politics.
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