The health secretary once described lockdown-breaking hookups as ‘a matter for the police’. Will he hand himself in?
Sorry, but the only thing I want to see Matt Hancock doing against the back of his office door is sliding down it with his head in his hands. But he can probably bank on not being sacked by Boris Johnson for having an affair. It would be like being sacked by Stalin for being slightly arsey to work with.
Even so, Hancock will be glad that the British Antarctic Territory has been added to the green list, just as he’s been added to the shit list. The South Pole suddenly looks well worth packing his bags for. Temperatures are currently minus 87 but feel like minus 108, making it considerably less frosty than any of Matt’s current climes.
That said, if Hancock does end up being resigned for this, it would fit with the general twilight mood in the UK’s national story. Nothing says “country that’s going to make a massive success of itself’” like a guy getting away with contributing to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths but having to quit for a knee-trembler. It’s like getting Al Capone for snogging.
So, then, to the health secretary’s “steamy clinch” with Gina Coladangelo, the lobbyist and long-term friend he took on as an aide last year (though initially did not declare it), and who was subsequently given a paid non-executive directorship at the Department of Health. Footage of this has somehow found its way from Hancock’s office security cameras to the front page of the Sun, in a WORLD EXCLUSIVE that feels like a major bollock-drop for the newsdesk of the Matt Hancock app. Guys … what happened?
Quite how the paper obtained the source material one can only speculate, though I’m suddenly reminded of a quote last April from a Downing Street official, who remarked to the Sunday Times: “There is not much love for Matt Handjob here.” Nor in the Department of Health, perhaps.
In some ways, the only thing you have to remember about Hancock – apart from the app and the parkour and the crying on telly – is that when Prof Neil Ferguson was discovered to have broken lockdown rules in the conduct of a relationship, Hancock went on TV to fume: “You can imagine what my views are. It’s a matter for the police.” So, yes – a shame to see sex cop Matt Hancock busted for sex crimes. But a reminder that cancel culture always devours its children.
Anyway. To the many, many, many sentences your 2019 self would not have understood, do please add: “BUT THIS WAS TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE BAN ON HUGGING WAS LIFTED!” Absolutely devastating to think that a full 10 days after The Clinch occurred, Hancock went on telly specifically to warn people thinking of hugging a loved one that they “should do it carefully”. Turns out we could have hugged people really hard, with tongues. Unless they were our relatives, I think?
“I’m really looking forward to hugging you as well, Dad,” Hancock smiled into the camera in that same interview. “But we’ll probably do it outside and keep the ventilation going. Hands, face and space.” Honestly, did you ever? How can I possibly trust a politician to lecture me on how to cuddle after this?
Back to the present day, though, and an early statement from another of the health secretary’s aides – disguised as an unnamed “friend” of Matt Hancock – would only say of the sensational revelation that “no rules have been broken”. Hancock himself has since said he accepts “that I breached the social distancing guidance”, which is one way of putting it; while this morning, he had his honour defended by Grant Shapps. Which doesn’t exactly feel like the Kitemark. Arguably the only way this story could now be more dignified is if a “friend” suggested that the health secretary had – out of an abundance of caution – used a tongue condom.
As for the media maelstrom, I know a lot of your tears might struggle to liquefy, but we can at least remark mildly on quite what a category-five shocker Hancock is currently having. He’s being serially stalked by blog-to-kill sniper Dominic Cummings, who released WhatsApp messages from last year in which the prime minister is shown calling Hancock both “hopeless” and “fucking useless”. There followed a somewhat excruciating mention in dispatches from the Queen herself on Wednesday. “I’ve just been talking to your secretary of state for health,” Her Majesty was filmed saying to Boris Johnson. “Poor man.”
And now all … this. As suboptimal career patches go, this is the crap UK version of the one when news of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky broke. The very next day, the colonel charged with carrying the “nuclear football” briefcase asked the president where the codes to open it were, and Clinton was forced to admit he’d lost them months ago. Tough week. Worse for Hillary and Mrs Hancock though, obviously.
According to his Downing Street spokesman, Boris Johnson considers the matter of his secretary of state for health breaking his own health advice closed, and has nothing more to add. Something for separated families to fume over as they read about Hancock pushing hard to delay double-jabbed people being able to treat amber countries as green. Meanwhile, I would say that however much the pictures may be amusing some, they probably ought to investigate the CCTV leak as a matter of urgency. It’s obviously not great that footage from inside government ministries is being given or sold to third parties.
As for Hancock, I read this morning that his job is now “hanging by a thread”. Luckily for him, that thread will probably turn out to be made of Spider-Man’s super-strength web fluid. After all, it’s difficult to escape the suspicion that at some absolutely elemental level, this is what Johnson wants from his cabinet.
It’s not just that the prime minister has had a lifelong hard-on for Ancient Times, where the Greek and Roman gods were grotesquely fallible and morally compromised, and where he could quite imagine a creature of his various infirmities and appetites sitting atop Mount Olympus. No, we can only conclude that Johnson wants Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson and so on to be bad at their jobs, because it provides cover for his own professional inadequacies.
Why else would you keep someone you clearly kept describing as “fucking useless” as your actual health secretary at the time of an era-shattering pandemic? Why else would you keep someone who constantly and demonstrably fails children and young people as your education secretary at a time when they so desperately deserve better?
The answer, alas, is that by remaining in place, guys like them serve as useful human shields. And I don’t see why it shouldn’t be the same with these sorts of scandals. Johnson must be only too happy to be surrounded by the erring and the compromised, because now he has shag cover too.
- Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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