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TREVOR KAVANAGH
Matt Hancock makes Boris Johnson a hypocrite too
MATT HANCOCK was a dead man walking the moment The Sun splashed on his buttock-grabbing smooch with staffer Gina Coladangelo.
Hancock haters — of which there are many, especially in the Tory party — swarmed on social media to denounce his rank hypocrisy.
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Hancock’s career and his marriage are in ashes.
But the biggest loser may yet be Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
It was a crass error of judgment to cling on to Hancock as health supremo for a single moment.
And it was a contemptuous insult to the voters who put him in office to insist “the matter is closed”.
Absurdly, Downing Street claimed the Secretary of State’s sex life was “a private matter”.
Yet this affair was taking place in company time, on company premises, between company staff.
For “company”, read “tax-payers” — many enraged by Hancock’s £16,000 pay-off.
The arrogance is stupefying.
Hancock trashed the very laws he had imposed, hounding innocent citizens and invading the privacy of every home in the land.
Where other countries such as Sweden urged caution, Hancock demanded criminal action for any breach of lockdown regulation, with fines of up to £10,000
Friends and neighbours were urged to act as Stasi-style informers against rule-breakers.
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The possibility we should “trust the people” never seemed to enter Hancock’s mind.
He deserves to be booked for breaking his own commandments.
The former Health Secretary’s version of martial law has dragged on long after many of its draconian measures were proved to be pointless.
Everyone has their own memories of lockdown loons drunk with power, police drones over the Derbyshire Dales and the women arrested for taking a stroll with a takeaway coffee.
Mine is of the overweight crematorium jobsworth racing to separate a grief-stricken widow from the arms of her sons
Even the Queen had to submit.
Her Majesty was forced to sit alone and bereft at the funeral of her beloved husband Prince Philip in Windsor’s airy St George’s Chapel.
Last Thursday, the kindly monarch sympathised with the “poor man” who imposed the “rule of 30”. She knows better now.
The Sun’s sensational world exclusive exposed Hancock as a randy hypocrite and, in Dominic Cummings’ words, a liar . . . or a cheat, which is the same thing.
Yet with Hancock gone — against Boris’s wishes — it is the PM himself who stands exposed to charges of hypocrisy, a man who believes in one rule for his Government and another for the poor bloody voter.
IN MIDST OF CHAOS
Lockdown has created a pent-up mood of conflicting emotions.
Until Friday, most were prepared to accept the most stringent invasion of our everyday lives in peacetime.
Not any more.
Visibily furious, Sky News’ Trevor Phillips spoke for millions yesterday as he tried to wring a glimmer of candour from blustering Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis.
Why, he demanded, did it take 36 hours for lover-boy Hancock to be dragged out kicking and screaming?’
As Lewis waffled, Philips exploded.
“On May 11, my family buried my daughter, who died during lockdown,” he said.
“Three hundred family and friends turned up online. Most were not allowed at the graveside, even though it was in the open air, because of instructions by Matt Hancock.
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“The next time one of you tells me what to do in my private life, why should I not tell you where to go?”
The question goes to the heart of the matter.
If the minister for lockdown snogs someone who is not his wife, why should we wear face masks on public transport?
Why observe anti-social distancing rules?
Why should we not fly to destinations with better Covid records?
In the midst of chaos, there is a chink of light.
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New Health Secretary Sajid Javid is more liberal-minded, less likely to be cowed by Sage plotters and eager, as an ex-Chancellor, to give the economy a chance.
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As for Boris, after seeing his own Health Secretary burned as a hypocrite, he cannot delay Freedom Day by another minute.
Nor, if he has learned any lessons at all, can he ever impose lockdown on Britain again.
Humiliating
SIR KEIR STARMER faces a humiliating third place in Thursday’s Batley and Spen by-election.
Even the Tories are struggling in this Muslim-dominated Red Wall target, against rabble-rouser George Galloway.
Apart from the 2016 murder of Labour’s Jo Cox, the seat is infamous for death threats against a local teacher who showed pupils an image of the prophet Mohammed.
Nobody in this democratic process has dared raise this issue of free speech – apart from Rod Liddle’s SDP candidate Ollie Purser.
Which is one reason why he doesn’t have a prayer.
Sajid Javid appointed health secretary after the resignation of Matt Hancock
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