Here was the tragedy. Matt Hancock’s tragedy. He wants to be loved. He craves our gratitude. Our attention. A man who has successfully searched for the hero inside himself. But the outside world is an unforgiving place. Most of us don’t even remember him for being the barely competent politician who happened to be health secretary during the pandemic. Though we still want a reckoning.
Our minds are indelibly seared with the image of him groping his lover on CCTV. So much for social distancing. Or as the needy contestant who was relentlessly bullied by the public on I’m a Celebrity … Or just as that bloke who used to be someone. He’s barely even an MP these days. He’s hardly ever in parliament. Too busy eyeing up his career options.
This then was Matt’s chance for some kind of redemption. Three hours on centre stage at the Covid inquiry to explain why no one could have done more than him to prepare the country for a pandemic. To remind us all how lucky we were to have had him. Though, of course – ever so humble – he had only ever wanted an opportunity to serve. But deep down, Hancock had never been in any doubt. He was a man more sinned against than sinning. Hell, he was even wearing his trademark lucky tie.
It didn’t altogether go as planned. Matt had started out urbane and articulate. A man sure of his brief. His replies expansive and generous. But the longer the session went on, the more monosyllabic he became. By the end it was all he could do to give snippy one-word answers. Like most politicians, Hancock does not like to have his version of events called into question. Let alone examined closely.
The counsel for the inquiry, Hugo Keith, cut to the chase quite quickly. There was no point trying to pretend the government had adequately prepared for the Covid pandemic – there would have been no need for an inquiry if it had – so would Hancock care to explain what went wrong. Absolutely, said Matt. He had really wanted to put in more pandemic planning when he had become health secretary. But he had allowed himself to be reassured that the World Health Organization considered the UK to be the best-prepared country. So if he had a fault, it was that he was just too trusting.
Hancock was far from finished. In many ways, it was by the by if the government had prepared or not. In fact it could even have been better that it hadn’t. Because the whole doctrine of pandemic planning was wrong. There had been a general assumption that no one could stop a pandemic, so all the focus was on where to pile the dead. No one had given a second thought to lockdowns. Apart from Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and those countries who had thought of lockdowns. The thing about Matt is that he is so self-important, he doesn’t realise when he is contradicting himself.
It was all most odd. I could have sworn there was no mention of this doctrinal category error in Hancock’s self-serving Pandemic Diaries. Yet here he was saying he had always suspected the government’s contingency planning had been methodologically unsound. Could be why he had seemed to miss so many of the resilience planning meetings. Or maybe it’s all been a recent revelation.
There again there was also nothing in his book about no-deal Brexit planning taking up all his department’s bandwidth. Something that Jeremy Hunt had first mentioned and which Hancock was quick to corroborate. Though perhaps that didn’t make the final edit of the book. Or his ghostwriter, Isabel Oakeshott, didn’t think it was terribly relevant. “No one wants to read about how Brexit limited the UK’s response to the pandemic, Matty.” Still, Hancock didn’t seem to think Brexit had been all bad. It had led to pharmaceutical contingency planning.
“I am not very good at talking about my feelings,” Matt said at one point, wiping his eyes. “But I do want to say I am profoundly sorry for every death.” He even sounded vaguely as if he meant it. Though he was quick to absolve himself from any responsibility. If he was guilty of anything, it was of taking important decisions on bad advice. Far be it from him to say everyone he had worked with were halfwits. But look at it this way. Just because some things were sub-optimal, it didn’t follow that they were all bad. It was great that some doctors were able to make PPE out of bin bags. Who was he to stifle their creativity?
Keith turned to social care. “It was terrible,” Hancock said. Though social care was part of his job description, he really had nothing to do with it. It was all the fault of the local authorities. Hell, he didn’t even know how many care homes there were in the country. Nor did he seem to care. It didn’t occur to him that one of his duties as health and social care secretary was to improve social care provision. It had been Tory policy to put the sector in crisis.
Though that would be the subject of a further session when he was asked to give evidence on the government’s record during the pandemic. For now, Hancock was off the hook. The government had made enormous errors. But somehow he hadn’t. He had just been a lonely lost soul, trying to do his best. The right man in the wrong place. Amazing that. He just hoped everyone would forgive him. Not that there was anything to forgive.
