jeremy, i wonder where you feel this leaves matt hancock personally, because if any of us put ourselves into his shoes, and seeing these messages, written by his current boss, for him, the prime minister, yes, this was probably typed out in the heat of the moment, yes, it is whatapps, yes, it is almost the kind of equivalent of a throwaway conversation, but ijust wonder where that leaves him psychologically, personally, professionally, trying to carry on in the job, go to a cabinet meeting, for instance, knowing that that is what the prime minister, at least in that moment, thought of him. well, of course it is awkward when your boss is reported to be saying things like that, but seriously, if boris johnson had been planning to move matt hancock in a reshuffle, i think it is unlikely that he would do that anytime soon, because i do not think he would want to be seen to be reacting to what cummings said, so the immediate impact may be the opposite of what mr cummings intended.
and has the cameras outside their house, do you think when dominic cummings went outjogging outside his house in front of the cameras on wednesday, he was actually taking the mickey out of matt hancock who likes to do a bit of a jog in front of the cameras? do you think dominic cummings is that calculating, to embarrass people? he is definitely that calculating. whether that was the motive or not, i don t know, but i think every single move that he does in these situations is choreographed. he was a special adviser, he was someone who was paid to think about how the media were going to react to different announcements and i think he is very good at it. let us just remind ourselves of one of the things that you said to him, dominic cummings, in that hearing that your committee did a couple of weeks ago. let us just remind ourselves. the cabinet secretary said - to the prime minister in almost the first meeting when he came back, prime minister, the british system is not set up to deal
and it has also given us a new classic in the genre of politicians being door stepped, which is the word we use when we chase after them when they are leaving their house or office or getting into their car. the particularjoy of this being that he was in his car and therefore your chances as a reporter of getting anything are pretty low, because the windows are up and he zooms by, but the windows were down and it is all. and it is also just hilarious. were you hopeless, mr hancock? it is one of those ones, as a journalist, when you do those doorsteps, that all of the luck is on your side, because it is a hot day and the windows were down. most the time, the car would have just zipped straight past. do think that is a new high? i am just relieved, i had so many embarrassing doorsteps in my time as health secretary and foreign secretary and so many appalling gaffes, including getting the nationality of my wife wrong, that hopefully these will all be dim and distant memories, because peop
this is someone who is political to his fingertips. the ferocity of his attacks on some individuals, but not wanting to touch other individuals, this was someone who plans things through very carefully and really understands the politics of every situation he has been in. it then triggered a series of events, because a few weeks after that hearing, you then had matt hancock, the health secretary himself, in to defend himself against all those claims made by dominic cummings and people said he was quite kind of calm and he was rattled and he seemed to have kind of a good answer
those are very serious allegations, and they are said under parliamentary privilege and we have got mr hancock coming here in two weeks time to respond to those, but as greg clark said, we would be very grateful for any evidence that you have to back those assertions. that was a good few weeks ago, have you had any more evidence to your committee from dominic cummings? no, we did not. that is why i think matt hancock s session went a lot more smoothly, because he was able to say, look, the evidence that was promised did not materialise. the fascinating thing about these sessions, of course, the personal invective, the comments about this person being hopeless, this person lying and so on, but actually behind that, dominic cummings said some very important things about what went wrong