Comment
TONY PARSONS
While Matt Hancock lectured us about Covid rules he took saliva samples from Gina
IT defies belief that Matt Hancock wasn’t sacked on the spot.
As soon as The Sun broke the story of the Health Secretary’s brazen contempt for the draconian laws that he devised, Boris should have dumped him.
🔵 Follow our Matt Hancock live blog for all the latest updates on his affair
6
The instant the PM saw proof that Hancock thought the rules he made were only for the little people, the two-faced sleazeball should have been fired.
The moment randy love-rat Matt was caught snogging and groping Gina Coladangelo — an old chum from Oxford who he put on the taxpayer-funded payroll — he should have been told to clear his desk.
The footage of him giving Gina Coladangelo mouth-to-mouth is from May 6, when public health regulations explicitly forbade couples living separately from meeting unless they were bubbled.
The only exception was if the gathering was “essential” for work. And even the Health Secretary’s mealy-mouthed, half-hearted apology — “I accept that I breached social-distancing guidance” was the most he confessed to — did not attempt to claim that his hand was fondling Ms Coladangelo’s bottom for essential work purposes.
But why didn’t you get it sooner, Boris? This was not about sexual morality, despite Hancock and his aide both having a spouse and three children.
This was not about another politician being caught with his metaphorical pants down.
This was not about Matt Hancock betraying his wife and his kids, who I suspect will remember the sting of these days for the rest of their lives.
This was about Matt Hancock ignoring the rules he devised, promoted and signed off. This was about Matt Hancock betraying this country.
6
6
This was about the principal architect of lockdown revealing that there was one set of rules for the peasants and another set of rules for the party elite. It stank. And it was wrong. And the double standards were unforgivable.
Matt Hancock stands revealed as a hypocrite of jaw-dropping proportions. How pious Hancock was in his advocacy of lockdown, how scathing about the transgressors who were caught breaking the rules!
“He took the right decision to resign,” Hancock simpered when Professor Neil Ferguson broke lockdown to meet his married lover, warning darkly,
“It’s a matter for the police” if the academic should be prosecuted. We couldn’t be clearer that social-distancing rules are there for everyone,”
Hancock brayed when Scotland’s chief medical officer was caught swanning around the country breaking lockdown rules. There is something approaching real fury in this country now. Because we followed the rules. And for many, those rules were heartbreaking.
The grown-up children who could not hug their confused and elderly parents in care homes. The broken-hearted bereaved who could not touch each other at a loved one’s funeral. The families kept apart.
The children who were kept home from school. The young deprived of all that is joyous about those fleeting years. The healthy businesses that were shuttered and may well never open again. And Hancock was still in a job?
6
Are you completely insane, Boris? Do you totally lack anything resembling a moral compass, or indeed a spine? Are you so pitifully weak, so lacking in judgment and so devoid of any plain old British common sense?
Don’t be fooled by the buoyant polls that tell us Boris is beloved — Hancock’s apocalyptic hypocrisy, and the astonishing fact that he clung to his job by his broken fingernails, did this Prime Minister, this Government and this country irreparable damage.
I first heard the term “party elite” in the old Soviet Union. I later heard it in the People’s Republic of China. A party elite is a class of arrogant big shots who get to wipe their feet on the little people, usually in a one-party police state.
But now we have a party elite in the UK. Because there is one law for them and one law for us.
How does Michael Gove get to watch the Champions League final in Portugal without self-isolating? Because Gove was on a “pilot scheme” that allowed him to test daily rather than self-isolate.
Why were so many Tory ministers — Hancock, Nadhim Zahawi, Gove again — in the VIP areas of Wembley for England v Scotland, when the ordinary football fan watched from home? The double standards are everywhere.
After the usual pathetic pantomime of Boris gormlessly bumping elbows with his guests at the G7 summit, those world leaders mingled without masks and socially distancing in Cornwall as soon as the cameras were not around.
6
“Was Cornwall exempt?” laughed one Government official, who was present at the G7 summit. “There was no adherence to the rules.”
The party elite can do what they want in Boris Johnson’s Britain. We follow the rules while they bend them into any shape they find comfy.
We are getting used to it now. But the wanton, reckless hypocrisy of one member of the party elite is in a league of its own.
In February, Hancock announced a new law that would get you ten years in jail if you lied to avoid quarantine. Ten years!
Ten years is what you get for child grooming, possession of firearms and indecent assault. Ten years is more than the average sentence for rape.
But while Hancock was lecturing the rest of us about strict Covid rules and threatening us with jail, he was taking a saliva sample from the lovely Gina Coladangelo.
When he was telling us to responsibly socially distance, he was exploring the lush topography of her bottom. Pass the hand sanitiser, minister! And the sick bag. If they do a good job, then recent history suggests we can tolerate promiscuous politicians in a way that would have been unthinkable in the past.
6
We can look the other way at stories of babes born out of wedlock, dumped mistresses and wives that are traded in for younger models. What we can’t live with is rank, stinking hypocrisy. What we can’t live with is the man who is personally responsible for the health of the nation acting as if none of the rules apply to him.
Mrs Hancock — the long-suffering, humiliated Martha — can decide if she wants to forgive her husband for dumping her. This country will never forgive him. Hancock has insulted the sacrifices that have been made and made a mockery of all the suffering that has been endured.
Sticking by him, Boris looked ridiculous. Hancock’s transgressions are being compared to those of Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former adviser who made a lockdown-busting drive to Durham to test his eyesight.
But for all his Yoda-like influence on the PM’s Luke Skywalker, Cummings was a backroom boy. It was Hancock who brushed away a tear for Piers and Susanna on Good Morning Britain when the first vaccines arrived.
It was Hancock who took every opportunity to wag a finger in the face of our weary, battered nation. It was Hancock who simpered, “We should all be careful. Outside is safer than inside.”
It was Hancock who harangued us, who lectured us, who droned on in all his insufferable, preening, pious self-righteousness, who averred that any price is worth paying to defeat this global pandemic.
It was Hancock, the fanatical Ayatollah of lockdown, who insisted the great mountain of misery built on the nation’s sacrifice was totally necessary. But not for him.
It was unthinkable that he should remain in his job. So many have died. So many have given up so much. So many have been kept from the people and places that make life worth living.
So many moments have been lost that can’t be regained. So much has been lost; so much denied. The children who never got to say goodbye when they left school. The hard-working men and women who have seen their livelihoods trashed by Hancock’s laws.
The loved ones kept apart in the last moments of life. All the sick and fearful on the longest waiting list in NHS history. Hancock has soiled the memory of all of that.
The man is a disgrace, and he is an embarrassment. He piles disrespect on despair. He told you and me that we could not hug our loved ones, while he was shagging the comely help and getting the taxpayer to cover her salary.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group say Hancock kissing his aide will damage government messaging on the virus. But it is worse than that.
After Hancock — now he’s finally quit — I can’t see why we should listen to a single word these Tories tell us about coronavirus.
We do not want a party elite in this country. We do not want rulers who think there is one law for us and one law for them.
“The Prime Minister has accepted the Health Secretary’s apology and considers the matter closed,” said a Downing Street statement of staggering stupidity.
No, Boris. You are about to learn that it is not you who gets to decide when this matter is closed.
It is the British people. Hear them roar, Boris: “I wasn’t even allowed to kiss my dying father because of Hancock,” said one angry, disbelieving voice on social media. “I hate him,” said a bride who has seen her big day endlessly postponed and diminished.
The grieving son who had to let his dad die without holding him. The NHS workers who put their lives on the line to protect strangers.
Most read in News
All those brilliant scientists who came up with the vaccine, all the volunteers who have given up their time for our world-beating roll-out.
Read More on The Sun
All those who have died, and all those who wake up in the middle of the night worried sick about how they will pay their bills, and all those whose lives have changed.
Matt Hancock has spat on all of them, Boris.
Matt Hancock resigns after affair with aide is exposed
Topics