There was something poignant about the BBC radio profile of Matt Hancock broadcast in the early weeks of the pandemic, which explored the background of the minister at the heart of the national emergency, who was often on our screens, delivering the No 10 briefing. It started with a university friend of his, Gina Coladangelo, explaining how his parents had separated when he was “very young”, but that they had both happily remarried.
He grew up in Cheshire, and went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a first in the politicians’ degree – philosophy, politics and economics – followed by an MPhil in economics at Cambridge. He worked at the Bank of England, on the housing market, and then became an adviser to George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, in 2005. I first met him then: he was energetic, clever, and – as Osborne put it – a bit Tiggerish.
