ITV is reporting that former health secretary Matt Hancock has signed up for its popular show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and had the Tory whip suspended with immediate effect for his trouble.
This would mean that the former minister, who also served as minister for culture in 2018, was last month reported to have signed up for Channel 4’s 2023 season of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, has effectively been expelled from the Conservative Party and will sit as an independent until the whip is restored.
Hancock follows in the footsteps of another former culture minister, Nadine Dorries, who also had the whip removed for appearing on the show on parliamentary time in 2013.
The new series of I’m a Celeb… is due to debut on Sunday November 6, although sources close to the show report that Hancock will be one of two late additions who will join the cast after the show’s premiere.
