MATT HANCOCK

Sturgeon’s Covid plan was as realistic as a bagpipe-playing unicorn

MATT HANCOCK today reveals the depths of his anguish over the affair which ended his marriage, calling the moment he told his wife as the ‘very worst conversation of my life’.

In his explosive pandemic diaries, the ex-Health Secretary describes his ‘terrible black dread’ at the prospect of his affair with Gina Coladangelo being revealed, and recounts the ‘devastating implications of our feelings for each other’.

The MP also writes about how then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson was the ‘kindest of confidants’ throughout the drama, and even filmed Mr Hancock’s resignation statement on his mobile phone.

Among today’s other revelations, Mr Hancock:

Describes his war with former No10 adviser Dominic Cummings, who was ‘shelling’ him and ‘itching for me to fail’, while calling the aide’s infamous lockdown ‘mega breach’ in Barnard Castle, a ‘s***show’;

Sets out the extraordinary tensions with Vaccine Taskforce tsar Kate Bingham, calling her ‘totally

‘In utter turmoil I headed home to talk to Martha’

unreliable’ and describing a ‘massive blow-up’ over her alleged obstructions, including trying to block vaccines from India;

Admits a total ‘screw-up’ which meant the Covid app couldn’t take data from NHS tests was his fault;

Writes that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was endlessly ‘on manoeuvres’, using the pandemic to try to further her separatist cause;

Condemns the EU’s handling of the vaccine, which was ‘enough to make a Brexiteer out of anyone’;

Tells how the Transport Department pushed for a 24-hour delay before introducing self-quarantine for travellers from Spain because Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was on holiday there;

Calls border enforcement a ‘mess’, telling how most passenger locator forms went ‘straight in the bin’;

Says he feared that Rishi Sunak’s ‘eat out to help out’ initiative would lead to a spike in cases;

Recalls being jubilant at hitting his testing target, writing: ‘let naysayers put that in their pipe & smoke it’.

The most passionately personal sections of the diaries, being serialised in The Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, The Mail+ and MailOnline, concern Ms Coladangelo, who was on the ITV set in Australia to greet Mr Hancock when he emerged from the I’m A Celebrity... jungle last week.

The relationship with Ms Coladangelo, a friend of Mr Hancock since their Oxford days who worked with him in the Health Department, was exposed when The Sun newspaper obtained CCTV images of the couple in his offices, in breach of his own social distancing rules.

Mr Hancock writes: ‘Accompanying the joy of falling in love – if you are supposed to be happily married – is the turmoil. You know, with terrible black dread, that sooner or later the relationship must be revealed and everything will come crashing down.’

The MP says the pair ‘knew the devastating implications of our feelings for each other [but] ‘were trying to work out the least painful way of being together’.

After the call from The Sun saying they had the CCTV footage, Mr Hancock said he ‘knew immediately what I had to do. I needed to tell [my wife] Martha right away, because it needed to come from me and nobody else.

‘I also knew I had to tell the children – it was going to be incredibly painful, but I couldn’t hide away from them for ever.’

Before going to see his family, Mr Hancock alerted Mr Johnson, whom he describes as ‘no stranger to personal turmoil and, it turned out, the kindest of confidants in these ghastly circumstances’.

Mr Johnson said he would ‘stand by’ the Minister, on the grounds that although Mr Hancock had breached guidelines he had not broken the law. Mr Hancock writes: ‘With those words ringing in my head, and in utter turmoil, I headed home to talk to Martha. It was – and remains – the very worst conversation of my life.’

Mr Hancock went into hiding in a futile attempt to ride out the storm, and adds : ‘Gina’s feelings of shame and guilt were nearly overpowering her. The jokes and cartoons on social media were excruciating.

We were being publicly humiliated, again and again... It is all my fault, of course. I knew I had to take responsibility. I knew in my heart that I had to resign’.

Mr Hancock then travelled to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat, to tender his resignation, with Mr Johnson filming his words on his mobile phone.

‘In the end, the great machinery of the State was nowhere,’ Mr Hancock notes. ‘It was just me and the PM, fumbling around with an iPhone. It wasn’t perfect, but I was beyond caring: I had to get it out.’

Mr Johnson then offered a last, characteristic piece of advice: ‘Time to dive beneath the ice cap.’

Ms Bingham last night hit back at Mr Hancock’s claims, saying the diary extracts published so far ‘suggest that, among other things, Matt was not aware of the pubembracing lished and agreed government vaccine procurement policy, did not read the reports about the work of the Vaccine Task Force, and did not understand the difference between complex biomedical manufacturing and PPE procurement.

‘When it came to deployment, he has somehow forgotten the policy that he and other Ministers were committed to at the time.’

She added that after a row over supplies of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, ‘I received several calls of apology from those present for Matt’s behaviour at this meeting, so it seems the attendees thought it was me who was being abused.’

She also denied she had employed her own team of spin doctors and said that the decision over vaccines from India came after she had left the taskforce.