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WE HAVE A VACCINE!

Boris danced a jig (badly), there was a scare over supplies being HIJACKED, an Arab royal family asked for 400 shots – and Hancock blubbed on TV

By Matt Hancock WITH ISABEL OAKESHOTT

OUR exclusive serialisation of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries over the weekend revealed how the Health Secretary dealt with the outbreak of Covid, the plotting of No 10 chief adviser Dominic Cummings and the exposure of his own affair with an aide. Today, hope at last as a vaccine is approved . . . but the political infighting continues . . .

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Nick Forbes, leader of Newcastle city council, has been sounding off about the impact of the [latest] restrictions on the local economy, accusing me of imposing them in ‘knee-jerk’ style and claiming it’s ‘confusion and chaos’.

boris was indignant. ‘Who is this t****r from Newcastle?’ he asked. i told him Forbes had called for the measures and we’d worked all weekend with his council to agree them. ‘Then he’s come out against them. Unreal,’ i said.

it’s part of a pattern: Labour chancers cooperate with us privately and then the minute we announce everything we’ve been talking to them about, they take to the airwaves to bleat about it all being a mess.

Friday, October 2

DoNaLD and Melania Trump have got covid. Tempting as it was to take to social media and suggest Trump try treating himself with a blast of UV light or by drinking bleach, i left it.

Saturday, October 3

a Day dominated by the discovery of a hideous blunder involving a week’s worth of covid data. somehow or other we have failed to log around 16,000 cases, which all had to be piled into today’s figures. We might as well just hang a giant neon sign above the Prof’s ‘next slide please’ screen, saying ‘see here: spectacular screw-Up.’ [The Prof is the nickname for chief medical officer chris Whitty.]

Monday, October 5

For reasons best known to themselves, No 10 are rowing back on tiers [putting areas of the country into tiers with different levels of restrictions depending on the covid risk] and has pulled the planned announcement from this week’s grid. They want tough action; then they don’t want tough action; then someone gets to the PM and he changes his mind all over again. FFs.

Tuesday, October 6

i saW myself in the new spitting image today. i wasn’t entirely unhappy. Though it doesn’t sound anything like me, i was pleased to see it has plenty of hair.

Saturday, October 10

boris has finally agreed to announce tiers on Monday.

Monday, October 12

iN The six weeks since i proposed the tiers system, there’s been delay and watering down at every stage — while the virus has grown faster than the worst- case scenario. What’s most frustrating is that i’m being portrayed as the one who’s pushing for lockdown, whereas actually it’s those with their heads in the sand who will lead us to a full-blown national lockdown.

Thursday, October 15

ToDay i announced that London and a few other places are going into Tier 2. The original draft statement was quite bullish on vaccines, but No 10 freaked, ordering me to delete anything that made it sound as if we think vaccines are the way out.

This really annoyed me, because they are the way out. since that’s our strategy, it’s ridiculous to be told i can’t say it. i will not be blown off the vaccine drive by the sceptics — in No 10 or anywhere else.

Friday, October 16

boris has been studying what they did during the plague and messaged this morning about how tiering worked in the old days.

‘ in 1606, the Privy council decreed that theatres should be closed if deaths from plague exceeded 30 per week,’ he told us. ‘ Not sure about these fixed thresholds,’ i replied warily. Thankfully this was the end of the history lesson.

Saturday, October 17

Woke up to another briefing against me from No 10, this time in the i. apparently ‘Matt hancock is the only person here who thinks there is actually going to be a vaccine . . . it’s a running joke with other departments’.

if so, i’m happy to own it. Thank God i banned the team from talking to No 10 about the [ vaccine] rollout. They’d just trash it.

had a bit of a counselling session from Nadine [Dorries, mental health minister] this evening. ‘you are too nice too often,’ she told me.

Thursday, October 22

a ‘ reqUesT’ from No 10 to switch the branding on entrances to Test and Trace sites from the Nhs logo to the hM Government one to look more authoritative. Frankly i’m surprised. Why do they want to own something they currently consider a s***show?

Thursday, October 29

We’re putting so many new areas into Tier 3 that it’ll soon be a national lockdown in all but name. had we brought in tougher tiers three weeks ago, as the Prof and i were arguing for, we wouldn’t be in this position. and for goodness’ sake, why aren’t we pushing harder on ventilation as well as masks? We have known since a spanish study proved it in the summer that covid spreads more like smoke than droplets — yet the comms is still geared to masks, which are less important than ventilation.

Friday, October 30

This afternoon i was called to a meeting of covid-s, the strategy group chaired by the PM. at the end: victory.

boris grudgingly accepted the stark, painful facts: that cases, hospitalisations and deaths are all rising and the Nhs will run out of space unless we act. The upshot is four weeks of lockdown then back to souped-up tiers.

having won the lockdown argument, i was exhausted but elated and literally ran up the stairs to my office, stopping off to see the Prof, who’d fought hard alongside me via Zoom.

‘secretary of state, you’ve saved many lives with what you’ve done today,’ he replied.

as i headed off to suffolk, i finally relaxed. We took the children for a curry at Montaz in Newmarket, where the staff seemed excited to see us. it was horrible to think they were going to have to close again on Thursday and i couldn’t tell them.

i really, really wanted to forget the pandemic, just for half an hour, when [iTV political editor] robert Peston’s number flashed up on my phone. i almost choked on my chapati.

‘i understand that this pm you, PM, chancellor and [ Michael Gove] met. am told 99 per cent likely there will be a full national lockdown from next Wed or Thurs,’ Peston said.

so the cat is out of the bag — already! Furious, i forwarded the message to my spads [special advisers] and No 10 comms. how the f*** had it leaked already? only a handful of people knew!

by the time i got home, i had an

enraged Boris on the phone saying his media people had told him hacks were pointing the finger at me.

‘Whoever is telling you that is lying to you,’ I replied furiously.

How had this happened? My money is firmly on Dominic Cummings via his acolytes. The agenda? To bounce the PM into announcing the lockdown sooner [rather] than later and stop him U-turning. If they got me sacked into the bargain, that would be a bonus.

I texted the PM to say that obviously the accusations against me were untrue and I could prove that if necessary. Half an hour later, he messaged asking me and [spad] Damon to bring our phones into Downing Street on Monday. ‘With pleasure,’ I replied coldly. Peston wouldn’t have texted me for confirmation if I was the source. Plus: it’s not like I benefit from this information being out early.

‘I’m taking a huge amount of flak to do the right thing and protecting you in the process,’ I told Boris.

‘ Understood, everyone overwrought,’ he replied soothingly, but with Dom dripping poison in his ear, I very much doubt that will be the end of it. So everything hangs in the balance. Either the PM has to rush into announcing the lockdown or there’s such a backlash, especially from our

truculent backbenchers, that he bottles it again.

‘It’s a f***ing disgrace,’ I told [Cabinet Secretary] Simon Case. ‘I hope you have a full inquiry.’

As lockdown approaches, I should be focused on testing, the vaccine and getting the new measures right to get us all out of this nightmare. Instead I’m fighting for my political life. This is no way to run a country.

Saturday, October 31

I HArDly slept. Consternation from friends about how it all came out. Jim [health minister in the lords] described it as ‘the fastest leak since Nick Clegg was on world- record form’ — he was notorious when we were in coalition.

Nadine was raging, telling me the culprit ‘needs putting in front of a firing squad’.

Thankfully, at the press conference the PM gave it his all, warning of thousands of deaths a day if we don’t do more.

lockdown will be a little lighter than last time because we’ve got better evidence about what

works. After the s*** I’ve taken, I don’t feel triumphant, but at least we’ve avoided a complete collapse in the NHS and those lombardy scenes in our hospitals. For now at least.

Sunday, November 1

BorIS was still far from reconciled to the lockdown he’d so grudgingly authorised, continuing to fret that we’d be accused of ‘blinking too soon’.

Meanwhile, Cummings is deliberately ignoring my calls and messages. Extraordinary. We’re in the middle of a national crisis in which hundreds of people are dying every day and I’m in charge of the health service. yet he won’t talk to me. It’s pathetic, petty and downright irresponsible.

Tuesday, November 3

I THINk someone’s trying to smear me. First, I’m falsely accused of being in a Commons bar after 10pm, then I’m falsely accused of leaking, and now The Sun wants to know if I went to have a haircut with Michael Gove at the weekend. Nothing to declare there.

one of my allies received a message from a journalist saying, ‘We need to talk about who is framing Matt at some stage . . .’ I think I can take an educated guess.

Tuesday, November 10

AFTEr months of working it up in secret, today I presented the vaccine rollout plan to the PM. I’ve rarely seen him as enthusiastic. Finally I think he realises this really is going to happen.

‘Can we go faster?’ he boomed, banging the table.

As expected, the price of success is that No 10 has gone from not believing the vaccine will happen to getting completely carried away. yesterday they started putting it out that ‘ten million people’ could get the jab before Christmas.

This was never the plan, is never going to happen, and [my spad] Damon spent half the day trying to kill it.

Friday, November 13

CUMMINGS has gone! I am elated and, more than anything, relieved for the sake of the vaccine and the country. He’s been such a frightening, damaging, negative force for so long.

‘Now we can actually build a government that works effectively,’ I told Simon Case excitedly.

We talked about restoring proper processes and ensuring everything that should come to me does come to me, instead of being diverted to one of many random groups Cummings set up to interfere/cut me out of the loop/attempt to control everything.

My team — officials and advisers — are thrilled.

Sunday, November 15

THE Sunday Times thinks we’ve been dishing out multi-millionpound contracts to ‘ cronies’. really? I’m absolutely fuming. I’ve not been involved in either the pricing or the decision-making behind who’s been awarded government contracts.

With all my years of experience as a politician, would I seriously just bung millions of pounds’ worth of deals to my mates, just kind of hoping nobody would notice? So galling.

Friday, November 20

I MET my Slovakian opposite number to talk about their government’s super-ambitious ‘let’s make the entire population take a Covid test all on the same day’ initiative. I have my reservations but Boris is super-keen.

Saturday, November 21

THE PM has been talking to the Slovakian PM and is incredibly eager to give it a go. Today’s the day I had to get ministerial approval on the plan. It did not go well — bluntly, the Cabinet think it’s crazy.

Doing my best to ignore the increasingly incredulous expressions on the faces of the Zoom attendees, I walked everyone through what would be required: nothing less than the entire military and every part of the NHS that could be harnessed to the cause. The price tag? A cool £1 billion.

knowing this one came straight from the top, I gave it both barrels. [Environment Secretary] George Eustice dismissed it as ridiculous. The Treasury said they

wouldn’t pay for it. [ Defence Secretary] Ben Wallace said the military was already deployed on other missions.

Afterwards, I picked up my phone to [spad] Emma. ‘Well, that was a drive-by shooting if ever I’ve seen one. Shows the limit of the PM’s powers, even in a pandemic. Cabinet government lives!’ I said cheerfully.

Much too late, I realised I’d forgotten to press ‘Leave Meeting’ on Zoom. Around 20 ministers and officials were still on screen, listening to every word.

Sunday, November 22

I’M unDEr fire from The Observer over Gina [Coladangelo’s] appointment to the [health department] board. They’ve described her as my ‘closest friend from university’ (true — one of) but are also making a song and dance of the fact that she’s a ‘director of a lobbying firm’.

The truth is she hasn’t been actively engaged with that company for years and every aspect of her appointment [as adviser] to the department went through all the proper channels. She was appointed after she proved herself during her stint as a volunteer just trying to do her bit for the country.

Tuesday, December 1

JIM [health minister in the Lords] came to tell me he’d just formally signed the Pfizer vaccine off. I walked into the Cabinet room, where the PM was standing behind his chair with rishi, Simon Case and a few others dotted around.

‘We have a vaccine! It’s been formally approved!’ I announced as I walked in.

Boris danced a little jig, his jubilant moves giving every impression that he hadn’t had much dance practice of late.

We were all elated. We know this is the only way out. So many people feared it would never happen. But here it is, the first in the world, in under a year.

On the way out of Downing Street I bumped into rishi, who gave me a man-hug and thanked me for pulling off the vaccine. Tomorrow is going to be massive.

Wednesday, December 2

ThE announcement to the markets was due at 7am sharp. From the privacy of a green room in the bowels of the BBC building, my first call was to my counterparts in the devolved administrations. ridiculously, we’d had to keep them in the dark about the impending announcement because we were worried about leaks. Then moments after 7am, I was on air telling the world.

unfortunately, Boris’s good humour didn’t last long. By midafternoon, I was just finishing answering questions in the Commons when I got a series of texts from an increasingly desperate-sounding Emma [spad], saying he was ‘going mad’.

She said Boris wasn’t happy that we’re launching on Tuesday, not Monday; wasn’t happy with the time frame for vaccinating carehome residents; wasn’t happy about the way we’re working with the devolved administrations; and had a bee in his bonnet about the use of wholesalers to get the vaccine to GPs.

‘Oh FFS,’ I replied. I wish he’d take a moment to congratulate the team and keep their morale up, not lose it like this.

Thursday, December 3

A CLOAk-AnD-DAGGEr operation to get the first 800,000 doses of the vaccine into the uk. We weren’t taking any chances. Imagine if rogue actors or hostile states tried to hijack the vehicle or seize the goods?

At lunchtime, a drama: in hushed tones, officials told me that the team was switching route ‘as a precaution’ following a credible security threat. It was amazing work by our intelligence agencies and the private-sector company who first spotted it, and just goes to show that we were not being paranoid.

Then, mid- afternoon, came confirmation that all 800,000 doses were safely in the uk. relief!

As news spreads, we’re beginning to get sheepish requests from VIPs around the world. A Middle Eastern diplomat reached out to nadhim Zahawi [ vaccine deployment minister] asking if we’d be willing to send 400 shots for the royal household. nadhim sounded embarrassed and assumed we’d have to find a polite way of saying no.

In fact, I’m up for these small diplomatic efforts — so long as the Foreign Office agrees, of course. Done appropriately, it pays dividends for international relations. nadhim sounded relieved, saying that the king himself is asking.

Friday, December 4

ThE first big setback: Pfizer say the vaccine isn’t brewing as fast as they’d like. It means we’re unlikely to get the ten million doses we’re due to receive before the end of the year, and production estimates for early 2021 are being scaled back. Thank goodness we didn’t let the plans go public.

Tuesday, December 8

ShOrTLy after 6am, I received confirmation that the first person had been inoculated, and I hurried off for the morning media round.

Gina and [spad] Damon accompanied me to the broadcast studios. ‘you need to relax’ was Gina’s advice, by which she meant: ‘Stop being so buttoned up.’ What she did not mean was that I should lose it altogether, which unfortunately is exactly what happened.

I was on my own in a dark windowless booth, answering questions, when they played the video of [the first person] getting her jab. Suddenly I completely lost it, blubbing away, battling to regain my composure as tears streamed down my face. ‘ For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together,’ I told myself desperately. Then the camera was back on me, my microphone was live and my watery red eyes were there for all to see. When I tried to answer the next question, my voice came out in a weird sort of croak. Gina said at least I’d shown how I felt.

Much later, I was on my way to bed when my phone rang. nobody rings at 11.43pm unless it’s bad news, least of all the Prof, whose number was flashing ominously. In that calm, professorial voice of his, he explained that three people had suffered a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine. One had nearly died.

We tried to calculate the statistical risk. If three out of 400 vaccinated today had a massive reaction, then that’s 38,000 out of the whole population. And 38,000 is an awful lot of people.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I thought, feeling physically sick. We may well have to halt the entire vaccination rollout. ‘ Perhaps all three have a history of anaphylaxis?’ I asked hopefully. Still feeling nauseous, I slumped into bed, knowing I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.

Wednesday, December 9

AT 5.30am my phone went. ‘ All three had a clinical history of anaphylaxis,’ said natasha [head of hancock’s private office].

‘[Prof Whitty] recommends that anyone with a history shouldn’t take this vaccine, that we introduce a 15-minute wait after vaccination to monitor people, restrict the rollout to hospitals for the next couple of days and get on with it,’ she said.

I can’t remember ever being so relieved in my life.

ExtractEd from Pandemic diaries: the Inside Story Of

Britain’s Battle against covid by Matt Hancock & Isabel Oakeshott, to be published by Biteback on december 6 at £25. © Matt Hancock & Isabel Oakeshott 2022. to order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 17/12/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 020 3176 2937.

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