So farewell, Matt Hancock, as the disgraced former secretary of state for health bows to the inevitable and promises to stand down as an MP. For all manner of reasons, we will not mourn his loss to public life. Harsh, perhaps, but all week I have had a very particular bone to pick with him. If we have any hope of ending the inhumane era of mass incarceration in the developed western economies, we must not let politicians like Hancock perpetuate it.
Every step I take in the professional world has been a rebuke to Hancock. At 17, I was convicted of theft and sentenced to a year in prison. After that, I worked in the Conservative party, including as a press secretary on Boris Johnson’s mayoral campaign in London in 2012.
