The leak of 100,000 personal messages from WhatsApp has exposed the former British Secretary of Health, Matt Hancock, in a scandal that threatens to splash former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and reactivate the controversy over the actions of the British Government before the Covid.
The WhatsApps have been leaked to The Daily Telegraph by the conservative journalist Isabel Oakeshott, to whom Matt Hancock entrusted his personal messages to help him write his book Pandemic Diaries. Three months after the publication of the book, Oakeshott says that he has decided to publish the information for the “public interest” and fearing that the official investigation will drag on for years and be used “as a colossal facelift” by politicians. .
Matt Hancock, who resigned in June 2021 after violating the Covid rules and having a torrid meeting in his office with his adviser and lover Gina Coladangelo (in images captured by security cameras), has accused the journalist of “enormous treason”. and has threatened to take legal action against her.
Among other revelations, the former head of Health would have backed down on the recommendation of the Government’s medical adviser, Chris Whitty, to carry out the Covid test on all those admitted to nursing homes. Although he initially said it was “a positive step,” he later reacted by limiting testing to only residents coming from hospitals.
According to Labor Party estimates, some 18,000 residents may have died between the initial recommendation and the time when action was finally taken. Jean Adamson, who lost her father in April 2020, assured ITV that the relatives of the Covid victims “are fed up with the lies” of the former Secretary of Health and are willing to come to the last consequences.
Hancock has assured that his personal messages have been manipulated to give the idea that he rejected the advice of experts, when the reality was that there were not enough tests available until August 2020 and that until then they had to be rationed.
The messages also reveal that Hancock forced a second closure of the schools, in January 2021, despite the strong opposition of the then Secretary of Education, Gavin Williamson, who accuses Hancock of having made the wrong decision and disregarding advice to maintain open schools and “putting students first”.
The disdain shown by Hancock “towards the physical and mental well-being of children” during the pandemic was one of the reasons that journalist Isabel Oakeshott, a mother of three, alleges to justify the leaking of personal messages. “I never imagined that I could receive so much information with sensitive communication between members of the Government,” acknowledges Oakeshott, known as a conservative commentator, “a passionate Brexiter” (in her own words) and detractor of the “confinement disaster”.
Some of the leaked messages bear the stamp of Boris Johnson, who is also in a compromised position due to his exchanges with Hancock: “If you are over 65, your risks with Covid are probably as great as falling down a ladder. But not We are going to prohibit the elderly from using the stairs. What do you think?”
Hancock’s close friends can’t quite believe how he could trust to write his book a journalist with a dubious reputation for her relationship with her sources, implicated in the scandal that landed economist Vicky Price in jail for assuming the fines. for speeding committed by her ex-husband (Liberal-Democrat Chris Huhne, then minister with David Cameron).
His detractors consider, however, that Hancock is deservedly paying the price for his self-promotion campaign, with his Pandemic Diaries and his stellar appearance on the reality show I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!, for which he was temporarily suspended as parliamentarian. Before the eyes of ten million viewers, in the middle of the Australian jungle, the former Secretary of Health found himself in the trance of eating kangaroo testicles and being locked in a coffin full of spiders.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
