Another week, another redemption arc given to an undeserving, well-known white man. If you’d asked me who I thought would be on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! this year, Matt Hancock wouldn’t have made the list. And yet, when the rumours started, I wasn’t surprised. Why? Because successful men will continue to be given a platform on which to perform (and make no mistake, this is a performance).

Matt Hancock was appointed health secretary by Theresa May in July 2018 and he was in charge of leading the NHS’s response to Covid-19 in 2020. A response which, for many, was appallingly handled by the government, with many MPs not following their own rules. From delays in the first lockdown and how contracts were awarded to inadequate testing and a lack of ventilators, Hancock presided over a lot of life-threatening decisions. He was famously forced to resign as health secretary in June 2021 when CCTV images of him kissing his aide, Gina Coladangelo, with whom he was having an affair, were published by The Sun.

Having first appeared on the show last Wednesday, he has already received a lot of air time, being voted in for the show’s daily trials every night for five days. Last night, that changed, and three other contestants were voted to do the challenges – his redemption arc, it seems, is well underway. 

There’s a lot to unpick about his appearance on the show: he’s not a celebrity, he’s a politician, and by appearing on the ITV show, he was suspended as a Tory MP. Or that voting for him to take part in trials isn’t really a punishment; it’s giving ITV what it wants (views, votes and engagement in the show) and Hancock the opportunity to appear on TV in front of an audience of millions and spin a different narrative. And what about his constituents? Well, he’s abandoned them to make a rumoured £400,000 for his I’m A Celebrity… stint. Is anyone serving them while he eats offal? But I’d like to focus on his redemption arc and why men like Hancock are afforded them so readily.