Yesterday’s post covered former Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s final 48 hours in that post.

Marital breakups

When Harry Cole’s story broke in The Sun on Friday, Hancock asked for privacy because he wanted to spend time with his children.

Perhaps.

However, on Monday night, Cole reported (emphases mine):

The ousted Health Secretary quit on his wife Martha last week after 15 years and is now understood to be living with his lover.

https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1409620194415329284

Her husband is devastated:

Gina, 43, has called time on her own 12-year marriage with Oliver Tress after her affair was exposed.

Oliver, 54, the millionaire Oliver Bonas founder, is said to be “devastated” by the shock revelations, as family pals confirmed the split …

A neighbour in Wandsworth, South West London, said: “Gina and Matt are giving it a proper go and Olly was left reeling.

“They had lots of friends here so we are all trying to help look after Olly.”

Hancock’s relationship seems to have been developing for some time, as the Mail reported:

The aide who kissed Matt Hancock in CCTV footage which ended his marriage and Health Secretary career was ‘asked two years ago if they were having an affair‘.

Gina Coladangelo, 43, is said to have denied the existence of any romance between her and Mr Hancock when she was quizzed by one of his allies.

Friends said on Saturday night the affair had been going on for months, despite others only seeming to find out when the steamy minute-long clip of them emerged.

One wonders why they did not get married after graduating from Oxford. They both read PPE and worked on the student radio station. The Mail explains why:

Matt Hancock’s mistress Gina Coladangelo was way out of the disgraced former Health Secretary’s league while they were studying together at Oxford, a fellow alumnus revealed last night.

Broadcast journalist Maxie Allen, who worked alongside the pair at university radio station Oxygen FM in the late 1990s, recalled that men were desperate to date Miss Coladangelo while ‘low profile’ Mr Hancock cut ‘an obscure figure’ and was ‘not someone you would mark out as destined for greatness’.

Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Mr Allen told the Sunday Mirror: ‘She struck me as someone who would get what they want. He’s done well. This wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t the Health Secretary and she wasn’t lobbying, that is blatantly obvious to anyone who knew them back then.

‘Gina was very glamorous, very nice and very good looking – all the young men held a candle for her. She was suave, composed and elegant. Most men would have given their right arm to go out with her.’

The former Health Secretary, who read sports for the radio station while he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics, was regarded as ‘low profile’ and ‘not someone you would mark out as destined for greatness’.  

He added: ‘Hancock did the odd sports report but he wasn’t well known. He was not the sort of person where he’d come into a room and everyone went, ‘Oh, Matt Hancock’s here’.

‘He had a very slight presence, not someone you would mark out as destined for greatness. Whereas Gina was very well-known and high-profile and memorable. You never saw them talking to each other.’

Mr Allen recalled Miss Coladangelo’s 21st birthday party at her parents’ home in Royston, Hertfordshire, and remarked: ‘It was a glamorous affair. They had a few bob. Gina is not the sort of person to get drunk and make a scene. She was very composed and elegant.’

Affair unfair to the public

The Mail‘s veteran columnist Richard Littlejohn put the affair into perspective for us in a time of lockdown:

Clearly this wasn’t simply a ‘moment of madness’. It’s emerged that the affair has been the talk o’ the steamie, as they say in Scotland, for months.

When wasn’t it going on?

So all the time Hancock was ordering us — on pain of prosecution — to keep our distance, not to hug our grannies or make love to anyone outside our immediate household, he was getting hot and heavy with his old university flame — a woman he’d put on the public payroll so he could keep her in close proximity for whenever the fancy took him.

So it would seem. He personally appointed her to her post, which required only 15 days of actual work per year:

https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1409493090256273416

Cross constituents

In Newmarket, Suffolk — the heart of Hancock’s constituency — people were unhappy with their MP. The Mail interviewed several of them on Sunday:

Today Newmarket locals said they were ‘happy’ that the MP for West Suffolk had resigned from the Cabinet as they accused him of ‘hypocrisy and double standards’ over coronavirus restrictions. 

Residents described how they had been prevented from visiting their grandchildren by Mr Hancock, while some admitted they only voted for him in 2019 to keep Labour out. Others were thrilled to hear that the minister whose regulations had kept their businesses shut had left the Government.

Graham Gladstone, 41, said: ‘He should have resigned immediately. The defence from Boris Johnson shows a contempt towards British members of public who have followed the rules and NHS staff who have had to be involved in treating people and the consequences of the virus. 

‘It seemed typical of Conservative ministers to see what the public reaction was rather than think about the consequences of what he did. Especially after he publicly denounced Neil Ferguson.’ 

Hannah Grimwood, 32, who works at Argos and has lived in Newmarket for 10 years, said: ‘I never liked him in the first place, I’ve been moaning about the man for years.  I feel sorry for Boris Johnson, he had too much on his plate and too many people telling him what he should and shouldn’t do.’

Miss Grimwood’s partner Gary Holliday, 42, added: ‘If you make the rules you have to follow the rules. He’s only human but when it’s happening a couple of times or more then members of the public are going to think it’s not fair.’

Cross Conservative MPs

Conservative MPs were also angry at Hancock’s hypocrisy. No doubt their inboxes were filling up with complaints from constituents. A crucial by-election is also coming up in Batley and Spen on Thursday, July 1, which the Conservatives hope to win. More on that later this week.

The Telegraph‘s Christopher Hope had the story about Hancock’s decision to resign on Saturday:

The Daily Telegraph understands that this view crystallised in a “fairly direct” conversation with Mark Spencer, the Government’s chief whip, at lunchtime on Saturday, who told him that 80 Tory MPs had complained to the whips’ office about him in the 24 hours after he refused to resign.

Mr Spencer fed back the concerns in a call to Mr Hancock at midday on Saturday. “There were 80 Tory MPs saying he should go at that time,” a source said.

The number of complaints means that more than one in four of the party’s 363 MPs complained about Mr Hancock.

Sky News interview about funerals

On Sunday morning, Trevor Phillips interviewed a Conservative Cabinet member, Brandon Lewis, about Hancock’s hypocrisy.

On his Sky News show, Phillips related the story of his daughter who died during lockdown on May 11 this year, six days after Hancock’s steamy clinch with his aide. Phillips’s daughter did not have the virus. She was anorexic.

Here’s the video:

The Evening Standard has the dialogue:

Mr Phillips told Mr Lewis he wanted “to do something I wouldn’t normally do and put a personal, private, question to you”.

He continued: “Over the past two days, every Cabinet minister, including you, has come out to essentially defend the Prime Minister and Matt Hancock.

“The pictures that we saw were of an encounter on May 6.

“On May 11, my family buried my daughter who had died not of Covid but during the lockdown.

“Three hundred of our family and friends turned up online but most of them were not allowed to be at the graveside, even though it is in the open air, because of the rule of 30.

“Because of the instruction by Mr Hancock.”

Before allowing Mr Lewis the chance to respond, Mr Phillips finished by saying: “Now the next time one of you tells me what to do in my private life, explain to me why I shouldn’t just tell you where to get off?”

Mr Lewis failed to acknowledge Mr Phillips’ loss, and said: “Look I absolutely accept the frustration, even the anger, from people and the situations they’ve been through.

“I’ve lost friends whose funerals I’ve not been able to go to, that is such a tragic situation for any of us to be in, which is why it’s so important for all of us to do what we can to keep ourselves and family members safe.”

He again defended disgraced Mr Hancock, adding: “What Matt did was wrong and that’s why he apologised and acknowledged that.”

Mr Phillips is covering for Sophy Ridge on the channel’s Sunday morning politics show.

More double standards

With regard to coronavirus restrictions, here is a video of Wimbledon from Monday, June 28. The stands are full. There are no masks nor is there any social distancing:

https://twitter.com/Aliskull/status/1409502051558694917

However, football matches are still restricted in audience numbers and require mask wearing:

https://twitter.com/DavPez/status/1409521540266348545

And here we are, being told to wear masks in shops, when we are there for far less time than it takes to watch a day’s worth of tennis at Wimbledon.

However, since the Hancock photos and video emerged, some shops are no longer asking for masks to be worn.

The Mail reported:

Together with growing exasperation at the never-ending cycle of lockdowns, people are taking matters into their own hands – with small retailers discouraging mask-wearing while massive anti-lockdown protests sweep through London calling for Mr Hancock’s arrest. 

Shops in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, placed signs in windows showing Mr Hancock kissing Miss Coladangelo, who studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford at the same time as Mr Hancock in the 1990s and is married to Oliver Bonas founder Oliver Tress.  

The signs say: ‘Welcome to House Interiors. Don’t wear a mask if you don’t want too (sic). Matt doesn’t’. 

The article has a photo of the sign, which is as amusing as it is true.

Hancock’s house was also targeted. It’s a pity he was not there to see it:

Police were pictured removing a sticker put on Mr Hancock’s London home, where his wife Martha and their children live. It says: ‘Our forefathers gave their lives to keep this country free, and you’re just going to sit back and let it become an authoritarian hellhole, over a virus with a 99.9% recovery rate?’ 

Television presenter Kirstie Allsopp pointed out:

the incident showed how ‘it was one rule for you, another for us’, tweeting: ‘I remember footage of Hancock whipping of his mask as he entered No 10, not even keeping it on in the corridors as school children were made to do, I knew then it was one rule for you, another for us.’ 

Humour at Hancock’s expense

On Monday, June 28, an amusing video went viral of a man enquiring of Hancock at the gates of Downing Street:

The Mail reported:

The clip, filmed by company boss Dan Wright on Monday afternoon, has gone viral and been viewed more than a million times already. 

In the video, Mr Wright asks the group of armed policemen: ‘Is Matt allowed to play? Is Matt allowed to come out and play?’ The smirking officer then responds: ‘No, he’s cleaning his locker out at the moment’ – to roars of laughter from his colleagues.

Passerby Mr Wright, of Chelmsford, Essex, also bursts out laughing while a second armed police officer quips: ‘He’s had his play already.’ 

Conclusion

It is to be hoped that the House of Commons will not forget the Hancock debacle any time soon.

Debates on coronavirus restrictions this week have been lively, even though Hancock was only the subject of one Urgent Question, which related to the security camera in his former office.

Julia Lopez, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, also fielded questions from MPs about Hancock’s use of his personal Gmail account for Health Department contracts.

More on those tomorrow.