Breakfast time in the Matt Hancock household must have been a little tense of late.
Following the Sun’s allegations of Hancock’s extra-marital affair, and a video of the Health Secretary kissing aide Gina Coladangelo, it’s a testing time for the man branded ‘***ing hopeless’ by PM Boris Johnson.
Not totally hopeless when it comes to flirting with married aides, however. In the good old days, the fall-out from this would be pretty clear; you’d fall on your sword, shuffle awkwardly beside your wife for a photo-shoot and tell the world how strong your marriage was as you moved off to the backbenches.
Today, however, even apologising for surreptiously groping your aide is asking a bit much. But then, if you’re not going to apologise for letting the Delta variant enter the UK in case it messed up a trade deal, or for overseeing a disastrous merry-go-round of lockdown rules, you’re not likely to think this is worth saying sorry for.
To be fair, Hancock has apologised for breaching guidelines, which at the time said hugging was out. Given the video evidence, he could hardly do anything but. This kind of mealy-mouthed apology was cooked up by a PR team who realised he’d been busted. No mention of breaking the law, no mention of infidelity, this was just a matter of getting too close to a colleague. If you hadn’t seen the video (and we really wish we hadn’t) you may imagine they’d simply brushed shoulders at the coffee machine.
This type of regret is a bit like the captain of the Titanic apologising for the band not being able to play an encore. Or like Bill Clinton saying sorry for adding to Monica Lewinsky’s laundry bill. Or like Donald Trump apologising for, no let’s face it, that’s never going to happen. But you get the gist.
The Sun played the long game, and it got the desired result. They launched the story with still images, then the following day published the 30-second video clip. By this time, Hancock’s position was untenable.
Johnson should have sacked Hancock, but Johnson has a track record of sticking by his mates (or erstwhile mates, in the case of Dominic Cummings). Johnson also has a fair bit of form in this department; he’s hardly one extol the virtues of fidelity.
Hancock can claim this is a private matter, but that doesn’t hide his hypocrisy. A few days before these images were captured he tweeted to the British public: ‘We have come so far, don’t blow it now’. You imagine he was saying the exact opposite to his aide.
