Hypocrite Hancock had to go after sting
Truth hurts for ex- health secretary
This column doesn’t normally get involved in political shenanigans happening 400 miles down the road.
There’s enough murk and mire on our own dirty doorstep to fill a page of any local newspaper!
But when you’ve been a journalist for almost 50 years – and 40 of them at the pointy end of the tabloid press – some stories rise above the interesting . . . and become irresistible.
And in the sorry tale of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock – the allure is off the scale.
Should a journalism student ever ask me to define how tabloids really work – I’d stand up, say “Hancock June 2021” – and sit down again. If you want to nit pick, a member of the Royal family involved would have put a platinum finish to this giltedged story.
That apart though – it’s all there. As prominent Government ministers go – the don’t come any bigger that Matt Hancock. He’s been the face and the voice of the pandemic since the first cases in Britain were given bio-hazard status and zipped inside plastic tents.
Then we have the raven haired mistress. Not any old Tina from the typing pool – but the exotically named Gina Coladangelo, a fellow Oxford University graduate.
We got the graphically grimy video grab of a stolen kiss.
That said - if they’d both been wearing paper hats, it could have been a snog and a grope from any office Christmas party.
But it wasn’t.
This was the man who lectured and hectored the nation about the importance of social distancing.
Yet here he was – putting his unmasked lips well within Gina’s two metre boundary.
And when the story was splashed on the image over a front page – the game was finally up.
There were the usual delaying tactics. Matt Hancock considered it a “private matter” and Boris said he had “full confidence” in his health secretary.
But this tabloid sting was like a scorpion – the toxic venom taking several hours to weaken and debilitate its victim.
By the end of the day, Matt Hancock was gone. And so was his marriage.
Inexorably, and sadly, the collateral damage will extend to his three children.
Gina Coladangelo, also married with three children, would no doubt share the denouement of her career and marriage with the same wretchedness. Matt Hancock’s wasn’t everyone’s favourite – but he was in the nation’s face often enough to build up an uneasy trust. His stints at the Downing Street podium appeared earnest and honest.
And his reputed work behind the scenes in getting vaccines into production - and then into arms had won him admiration from all shades of the political spectrum.
Post pandemic – he would have been a touch of The Queen’s sword away from arising as Sir Matthew
Hancock. And at the end of his political career, Lord Hancock of Somewhere would surely have taken a seat in the Upper House.
It was all there waiting for him. What’s ahead of him now is the uncertainty he’ll even be allowed to stay in the Conservative Party. His embarrassed constituency may well ditch their MP with the same alacrity he ditched his own wife.
And the debate has also started on how the press may have been given illegally gained information – and invaded the privacy of an individual with disastrous consequences.
There is an argument that Mr Hancock committed no crime. I disagree. Matt Hancock’s ‘crime’ was not infidelity – it was hypocrisy. And a pretty serious version of it.
Back at journalism school, we are taught the laws surrounding defamation and libel. The first defence of any newspaper is “veritas” – which means ‘the truth’.
Thanks to journalism in its rawest tabloid form, the public now know the truth. And as Mr Hancock has found - the old maxim still holds good
Sometimes, the truth hurts.