Have you ever had a piece of litter on your shoe that just doesn’t leave? You end up scraping your foot along the ground for ages whilst trying to clean off whatever piece of litter has decided to latch itself onto your sole, like a face hugger out of Alien – before you eventually relent to see what you’re stuck to and having to forcefully remove the slime from your shoe. So what is stuck to your shoe? It can range from gum, chocolate wrappers or general leaves. But in the case of UK politics, that thing that you just can’t get away from is Matt Hancock – described as ‘your sister’s first boyfriend with a car’ by Charlie Brooker. Every few months, he rears his head again, just to be ridiculed and crawl back into the depths of whence he came. So, who is Matt Hancock? What is his deal? And why won’t he just go away?
Matthew John David Hancock (missed out with the middle names of Mark and Luke) was born on the 2nd of October 1978, to parents Michael Hancock and Shirley Hills. He attended King’s School in Chester (where he studied Maths, Physics, Computing and Economics for his A-Levels), before studying at Exeter College, where he attained a first in philosophy, politics and economics (the only time Hancock has been successful with PPE). He later earned a ‘Masters of Philosophy’ degree at Christ’s College, Cambridge. During his time at University, Hancock would be diagnosed with dyslexia – something he would later use to back up his appearance in ‘I’m A Celebrity.’ During this time, he also became a member of the Conservative party. He would spend some time in the family software business, before moving to London to become a housing economist at the Bank of England. Hancock would get his first proper connection to politics when he became an adviser to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, in 2005. Strangely, Hancock has had one of the longest careers as an MP in British politics, gaining his seat in 2010 for West Suffolk – though admittedly the next 6 years of his life as MP were relatively quiet, the most notable occurrence being his membership of the Free Enterprise Group, a group co-founded by Liz Truss. In 2016 he would become the Paymaster General of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and two years later, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. He would only have this role for 7 months and 1 day, before he evolved into his most recognisable form – the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Thus begins the Coronavirus saga of Matt Hancock.
Before we dive in to the basic events of Hancock’s half-hour it should be noted that a lot of this knowledge is resultant of the leaks by the Telegraph and Isabel Oakeshott, so not everything that is being said was known at the time. Dates may not be as clear in this part, but the relative events of 2020 are able to merge together somewhat to get a general idea. Hancock, as health secretary, would attend the early ‘COBRA’ meetings (unlike his boss), and our golden boy quickly condemned those who were socialising after restrictions were put in place. He messaged Simon Case (permanent secretary for 10 Downing Street) to mock those who were isolating in hotels. Like most government officials, Hancock was against going into lockdown until the very last minute, but would push for it once everything locked down. Hancock would become a regular member of Boris Bingo (as I like to call it), alongside the greatest man in Britain, Sir Chris Whitty – alongside the two Penfolds from Danger Mouse. His first public controversy came over his announcement of his Covid tests, with the government apparently reaching their target of 100,000 tests. A great achievement. However it quickly came out that the government had been slightly liberal in its view of actual ‘testing,’ with some tests being counted twice, and other added tests in general.
PPE was also controversial. Devoid of any PPE in the early days of Covid, the government started to license production out to companies to make PPE. Two issues here. Firstly, in order to get a license the companies had to reach a certain threshold of production, a threshold that many companies would find hard to achieve – so whilst we could have gotten some more PPE, because it was either a third or a fifth of the threshold, we didn’t get it. Secondly, it came out that Hancock had paid a friend of his, Alex Bourne, a contract of £40 million through the government licensing – putting a lot of emphasis on the conservative ideal of ‘jobs for the boys.’ By summer time Hancock started to step up his devious actions. He would complain about teachers on Whatsapp, reject advice on Care Homes (where 174,000 deaths occurred from Covid-19 directly), and he would infamously break not only his own guidelines, but also his own wedding vows. Matt Hancock, married since 2006 with three children, went and snogged his long time ‘friend’ Gina Coladangelo – which wouldn’t be found out until a year later, but would ultimately cost him his marriage.
So Hancock, isn’t doing very well for himself, and is just blundering his way through Whatsapp. And surely you must expect he would make a right fool of himself with Party Gate, right? Well, admittedly, no. When Party Gate was being revealed, Good Morning Britain put out a call for any Conservative Party MP to come on the show and talk about what happened with Party Gate, and their reception was pretty poor, as Matt Hancock came on the show where he revealed he wasn’t at Party Gate because he wasn’t invited. A similar sentiment of his dislike was seen when Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister and famously avoided Matt Hancock as he was greeted by the Conservative Party. By this time Hancock was no longer Health Secretary, having been succeeded by Sajid Javid, so surely there was no real way for him to cause any more damage to his party, right? Well, again, no. On the 2nd of November, Hancock announced that he would be appearing on ‘I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here!’ An appearance which he apparently paid £320,000 for, whilst he was still an MP (leading to him getting the whip suspended from him – a good case study for A-Level politics). The show involved Hancock, like all Britain’s past criminals, being shipped off to Australia, where he would have to compete several disgusting challenges like swimming through maggots and eating animals genitalia. The show is often used for ‘Celebrities’ to gain notoriety or make up for past mistakes. Hancock was different in his entry that he came in separately later with Comedian Seann Walsh. Walsh was also trying to clear his past wrong doings, that being his time on Strictly Come Dancing where he was seen to have kissed his dance partner, Katya Jones – so one guy tries to use the show to make up for cheating on his girlfriend, the other for causing several unnecessary deaths via his bungling of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Sadly, Hancock did quite well in the show, making it to the final. Hancock claimed that he was championing Dyslexia via his appearance, and he also donated £10,000 to charity via his appearance. So Hancock calmed down again after his appearance on I’m a Celebrity, with everyone losing interest after finding out he could deal with the challenges, and that his only real occurrences in the show was Boy George weeping over his appearance in a style attributed to the ‘Oh Diana’ sentiment of the tabloids ever since the 31st of August, 1997. But Hancock would make his next blunder in February of 2023, via his book – Pandemic Diaries.
Back in April of 2022, it was announced that Hancock would be writing a book about Covid-19 from his perspective, cowritten by a one Isabel Oakeshott. Now, in order to help write the book, Oakeshott was given several Whatsapp messages to use in its publication, and signed an NDA to not ever reveal the information contained on the messages. But Oakeshott was able to give us an A-Level Philosophy and Ethics, Business Ethics case studying by saying ‘lmao xd’ to the NDA, and giving all whistle blowing all the material via leaking it to the Telegraph – who have started to drip feed it to the general public. On the messages it was found that Hancock had ignored a lot of advice from officials, worked in ways to boost public reception over actual safety, had blackmailed other MPs into voting for his ideas, and – most notably for the British Public – had considered a culling of every single domestic house cat in the country. Yeah, remember when we were told to not pet our cats because they may spread Covid, well Hancock and the hooligans of the government were considering telling everyone to kill their pet cats. Take it from a country who has had an RSPCA and other pet societies longer than we have had universal emancipation, telling the public to kill their pets would have resulted in uproar, and would have made Party Gate look like a hilarious whim in comparison.
It is probably impossible to imagine Matt Hancock escaping any controversy any time soon. It is like controversy is an innate property or predicate to the concept of Hancock. It is unlikely that Hancock will ever recover from these scandals, and in all honesty nor should he. Matt Hancock as Health Secretary completely butchered the Pandemic, leading to several unnecessary deaths, with a response to the controversy as gentle as a freight train running through a nursery. What will happen to Hancock is anyone’s guess, but it is unlikely he will see any significant role for the rest of his life. Matt Hancock – one of the most controversial figures in British Politics of our time, and also a silly looking git.