Boris Johnson’s government may be a barely competent chumocracy, but I can assure you that if you’re a journalist covering UK politics it is the gift that keeps on giving.
There I was on Friday morning, wondering what on earth I was going to write this column about. (Anything but Covid!) Then my news alerts started pinging like crazy. The health secretary had been caught on CCTV in a passionate kiss with his adviser and old university friend Gina Coladangelo at 3pm in early May in the health department offices.
Blimey. Now, I’m not the kind of pious tut-tutter who has any opinion whatsoever on how people should run their private lives. But, I — and most of the British public, it turns out — do mind when a pandemic is raging and the health secretary carries on an affair during working hours with a person whose appointment was waved through the official channels.
Thing is, legalities of leaking the footage aside, the kiss happened several weeks before restrictions were eased to allow hugs between family and friends in different households. And when the government epidemiological adviser, Prof Neil Ferguson, was caught visiting his lover during the first lockdown in March 2020, Matt Hancock sanctimoniously even said the matter should be referred to the police. Ferguson immediately resigned, Hancock did not.
Another thing is that Hancock has been hectoring the public about the rules over the past 16 months, and as health secretary can’t even stick to his own rules about distancing. Yet another thing — he didn’t resign when he was found to be handing Covid personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts to his not-entirely-qualified tenderpreneur chums amid a PPE shortage during a pandemic; nor did he resign when thousands died in care homes because he messed up the testing system for it, possibly because the UK test-and-trace system overall was a snafu because he appointed another of his mates, the inept Dido Harding, to run it; nor when the death toll hit 120,000.
But oh, he resigned because of an ill-judged smooch because all his previous indiscretions and obvious incompetence meant his position became absolutely untenable. In fact, the only part of the government’s pandemic response that has been world-beating has been the vaccine rollout, and that’s because responsibility for that did not fall under Hancock but vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi.
What is most unbelievable is that Hancock did not quit immediately on the story breaking, and nor did the prime minister sack him. Rather, Johnson said he accepted Hancock’s apology and considered the matter “closed”. (Guess it would be rich for serial philanderer Johnson to sack a minister for an affair.) It was only when the nation’s fury reached boiling point on all sides of the political spectrum, more than 24 hours later, that Hancock was forced to resign on Saturday afternoon.
The prime minister has a track record for backing his cabinet ministers under fire, and stood by Hancock even when his previous head aide, Dominic Cummings, revealed screenshots in which Johnson called the health secretary “totally fucking hopeless”. Nonetheless, given Hancock’s track record and unpopularity as a sycophant it is baffling that Johnson kept him on as health minister for so long when so much is at stake in this pandemic.
The theory is that not only does Johnson prize loyalty in his lieutenants above all else, but Hancock is being set up as the fall guy for the inevitable public inquiry into the pandemic that so many in the UK are demanding. Either way, don’t be surprised if we see Hancock back in the cabinet once the storm has died down.
• Dr Masie, a former senior editor of the Financial Mail, is chief strategist at IC Publications in London and a fellow of the Wits School of Governance.
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