Thread by @thesundaytimes

On Wednesday, as the government reeled from the Allegra Stratton video, ministers began pulling out of media appearances.

Enter stage left: Matt Hancock
thetimes.co.uk/article/matt-h…

Another man, conscious that Johnson had described him as “totally f***ing hopeless” during the pandemic, might have taken revenge. Not Hancock. “What I know is that the prime minister has said no rules were broken,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

It’s been a mixed year for Hancock.

On the plus side, Google has just named him as the most searched-for British politician of 2021. On the minus, that was because of his marriage-ending, resignation-sparking clinch with his colleague and old university chum Gina Coladangelo.

But if you thought that meant you’d seen the last of him, you were wrong.

Since the summer, he’s been on a rehabilitation tour designed to help the public see the hero inside the lover. It hasn’t been smooth sailing.

It started with a September article for The Mail on Sunday on vaccines. In brief, he likes them, and he doesn’t like antivaxers.

He claims to have spent three hours writing it, which sounds plausible, and was paid £2,000, which is generous.

He tried movies, posting a video of himself meeting and bumping fists with his West Suffolk constituents, like a veteran returning from war. “We’ve got through it, haven’t we?” he told one. “Now coming out the other side.”

After a few days of mockery, he deleted it from Twitter.

Happily, copies were made.

Next, there was the Big International Job, “Honoured to be appointed United Nations special representative,” Hancock tweeted in October. He was going to help Africa recover from the pandemic.

Four days later, the offer was withdrawn.

Last month we learnt he was going to write a “How I won the Covid war” memoir, describing his role in the development of the vaccines. HarperCollins were said to be considering a £100,000 advance.

“We have no knowledge of such a book and are not in talks,” HarperCollins replied.

Setbacks, sure, but was Hancock defeated?

Not a bit of it. It was time for a confessional interview. So he went on ITV’s Peston, where he talked about “the heat of battle”. It was starting to look like he thought he had actually been in a war.

This week’s rehabilitation effort has been Hancock’s attempt to extend dyslexia testing for children. Being dyslexic himself gives him a personal battle that he can talk about to make his journey from private school to Oxford to safe Tory seat look more like a struggle.

Not everyone is convinced. In a deadpan moment that should win him a Bafta, Phillip Schofield asked Hancock: “Was it your dyslexia that meant you misread the social distancing rules?”

But he does have the qualities that might make him succeed in getting back into cabinet – he is incapable of feeling shame and will do anything to advance his career.

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