Yes, I think it should eventually if you haven't stashed a reference somewhere.

Python has both a reference count and a GC so in simple cases it will often be cleaned up as soon as it goes out of scope but if you create a cycle it may take a while. Relying on the GC to close open sockets is a great way to run out of file descriptors when bursts of work happen.

The way the original try/except was structured meant the close() for the socket would never get called, so py-amqp holds onto the reference indefinitely, preventing the garbage collector from doing it's thing.