Eating kangaroo penis on live TV will not be the first gut wrenching challenge of Matt Hancock’s career. At the end of a long day in September 2007, Matt walked into my office looking like his dog, cat and pet parrot had all been shot. He closed the door behind him and said: ‘We have a big problem.’
It was the eve of the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool and Matt, myself and the entire opposition team had been working around the clock to prepare a package of game-changing policies to announce.
The secrecy of those policies was mission critical. Indeed it’s fair to say that David Cameron’s ambitions to become PM rather rested on it.
As an adviser to Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, Matt’s job was to make sure the policies were ‘bomb proof’ – that the sums added up. And he was rather good at it. But in the pre-conference rush one of his team had emailed across the entire policy package and without a password. Only they didn’t email Matt Hancock, they emailed Mike Hancock, the Lib Dem MP, in error.
In I’m A Celebrity parlance, Matt knew that the screw up meant an ‘I’m afraid it’s YOU’ exit could be coming his way.
At that moment he could have blamed others and blended into the wallpaper as I’d seen so many do on so many occasions in my career. But instead Matt took the bullet full in the chest. He and I walked into David Cameron’s office and gave him the unvarnished news. Matt then said unequivocally that it was his mistake and he was entirely to blame.
After a painfully long period of silence David swung his jacket over his shoulder and declared that they were good policies before they were leaked and would still be good policies after. He then said a cheerful good night leaving Matt grateful that his career had not come to an embarrassing end.
Much later, as I hurtled towards my own ‘Get Me Out Of Here’ experience, Matt’s ambition found a new gear. And he was off into life as an MP and later, of course, into Cabinet. At one stage he even fancied himself as party leader which, even to his supporters, seemed a bit of an overreach.
A brilliant Sun scoop then put paid to any serious political ambitions – at least for the foreseeable. And now many think that Matt should spend the rest of his life under a new identity in South America rather than on TV under Australian skies.
He could have blamed others, but instead Matt took the bullet full in the chest
But while Matt’s decision to go ‘full fame’ is not one I would have advised, it is not entirely brainless. The timing and nature of the show has resulted in valid criticism and the good people of West Suffolk have every right to give him the boot now or later. But he’s not the first to roll the I’m A Celeb dice and in doing so leave his constituents high and dry. And it worked out pretty well for Nadine Dorries.
Matt knows all that and is hoping that when the wider public get a proper look at him on screen they’ll see someone who is game, not nearly as posh as people assume and who has a backstory that speaks to his grit as well as a pretty shameless ambition. And that if the I’m A Celeb bosses – and this is a very big if – give him a fair crack of the editing whip he might just surprise a few people.
Matt, like a lot of politicians, is a risk taker. And he has a skin thicker than most. That makes him, as his old boss George Osborne says, somewhat Tiggerish. But he’s also got a touch of another Winnie The Pooh character. And it’s the bit of ‘I know best’ Rabbit about Matt that may have resulted in him digging a hole just big enough to bury himself in.
But we’ll be watching. In the mind of a man who is on the comeback trail, that is a good place to start.
And Matt will remember that unexpected things can happen in life. Like Mike Hancock not bothering to read his emails. And in doing so allowing David Cameron to announce a set of policies that, one might argue, led the Conservatives back to power.
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