Do you want the country run by a group of jokers who spend their time posting beer mug emojis and smiley faces on WhatsApp?
WhatsApp messages might be encrypted, but I guarantee the bulk of the content will be utterly mundane. Best kept between friends.
I only lasted six hours in the Loose Women group, after exiting to save my sanity. The stream of chat about their daily lives was utterly draining. Unfortunately (for me anyway) within a group it seems that everyone is entitled to weigh in with a comment.
WhatsApp groups are fuelled by knee jerk reactions and shared values. Ok for entertainment and expressing sympathy, sharing a gag, commenting on Love Island or cheering someone up. Asking when to plant potatoes, clean a shower head or mend a broken dishwasher, laughing at Madonna‘s latest reincarnation. But the serious business of government?
Is WhatsApp the place for a Government minister to debate whether school children should be forced to wear masks – a ruling which would undoubtedly affect their mental health and ability to learn? Or hold group chats about whether care home residents could meet their relatives after months of unnecessary (in my opinion) isolation? A decision which caused huge distress and often led to death.
Matt Hancock with Isabel Oakeshott at the launch of his book, Pandemic Diaries: The inside story of Britain’s battle against Covid
The unauthorised release of these texts and messages (which Hancock calls ‘a betrayal’) gives outsiders an unprecedented glimpse into how modern government now works
JANET STREET-PORTER: Do you want the country run by a group of jokers who spend their time posting beer mug emojis and smiley faces on WhatsApp?
The leaking of 100,000 text and WhatApp messages received and written by former Health Minister Matt Hancock during the coronavirus pandemic reveal the I’m a Celebrity action man and his select group of pals spent every waking hour during the crisis chit chatting and swapping jokes, even boasting that they would ‘get heavy’ with the police for failing to enforce the ever-changing covid regulations.
The Loose Women’s WhatsApp group didn’t miss me when I left and were amazed I’d lasted so long. I still use the platform to exchange messages with friends, one on one. To arrange to meet up or swap a photo. As for group chats- I’m decades too old for that. And strictly no emojis- I’m bound to choose an aubergine when a carrot is the correct comment. Words are just so much easier.
Which begs the question: was WhatsApp the right place to decide strategy which would seriously impact on a frightened and beseiged population during a major health crisis?
But this is what happened when Covid arrived on our shores.
As a result of journalist Isabel Oakeshott’s decision to reveal the material Hancock handed her to ghost write his pandemic memoir, we know that the senior officials (and it was mostly men) making the most important decisions affecting our lives and those of our elderly loved ones during the worse crisis this country has endured since the war, were made- not in the Cabinet office- but often via trivial group chats on WhatsApp.
Decisions about mask-wearing, the closing of schools, the shameful decision not to test everyone entering a care home at the very start of the pandemic in early 2020- were not made in a rational, accountable way. They were secretly evaluated on social media by a select secret group of Ministers, their pals and advisors.
At a time when the public were being told in nightly press conferences that the government was ‘following the science’ the truth appears to be anything but. A mix ‘n’ match set of policies were being randomly evolved with rumours, fake information and ruthless backstabbing all part of the mix.
The messages published include jokes about ‘imprisoning’ travellers who arrived at Heathrow at the start of February 2021 and were forced to quarantine at special hotels at a cost of thousands of pounds. The country’s most senior civil servant, Simon Case (who was Cabinet Secretary at the time and the most senior civil servant in the UK) enthusiastically asked Hancock how many were ‘locked up,’ commenting ‘hilarious’ when told the number was 149 in a single day.
Snotty comments and ruthless backbiting between rivals like Gavin Williamson and Matt Hancock were publicly exposed this week but didn’t appear in the final book – published a couple of weeks after Hancock emerged from I’m a Celebrity. The work was derided by critics as an exercise in shameless self-justification.
The unauthorised release of these texts and messages (which Hancock calls ‘a betrayal’) gives outsiders an unprecedented glimpse into how modern government now works. Reading the conversations between Matt and his ‘Top Team’ WhatsApp group, you might wonder how they ever got any work done, considering the amount of time spent chatting on phones.
The country’s most senior civil servant, Simon Case (who was Cabinet Secretary at the time and the most senior civil servant in the UK) enthusiastically asked Hancock how many were ‘locked up,’ commenting ‘hilarious’ when told the number was 149 in a single day
This devastating expose of modern government in action reveals people batting ideas around and coming to decisions in a spur of the moment impulsive way, without any reference to ‘science’ or ‘truth’. Pictured: Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson, then Health Secretary and Prime Minister, visit to Bassetlaw District General Hospital in November 2019
In the dark era before social media ensnared us, politicians held meetings which followed an agenda, and minutes were issued, so everyone present knew what had been agreed. This devastating expose of modern government in action reveals people batting ideas around and coming to decisions in a spur of the moment impulsive way, without any reference to ‘science’ or ‘truth’. Group think prevails.
Matt Hancock is shown to be a shallow individual, primarily concerned with ‘getting results’- ie getting a positive story about himself into the media – be it the number of people being tested daily, or his successful appearances on television. There’s a celebration when his nemesis Piers Morgan finally leaves Good Morning Britain.
The conversations with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case are particularly cringe-worthy. Debating the arrivals placed in quarantine hotels in Feburary 2021, Hancock gushes ‘we are going to be giving big families all the suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms’.
Like an over-enthusiastic teenager, Hancock starts posting stories from this website of the police stopping people at airports after whingeing they weren’t doing enough to enforce lockdown, commenting ‘the plod got their marching orders’.
When passenger locator forms were introduced for travellers, Hancock is concerned that they might be faked and posts he wants ‘no entry without a properly filled in PLF (locator form), and prison if you lie or write Mickey Mouse’.
Is it any wonder that in the end, Matt Hancock rubbed too many people up the wrong way and was caught out indulging in close personal contact with one of his own advisors?
Perhaps the current humiliation of Matt Hancock will force politicians to stop acting like teenagers and put their phones away
The messages reveal a man determined to exceed the boundaries of his role, determined to tell the police how to do their jobs, and obsessed with out-manoeuvering Gavin Williamson (then Education Secretary) who wanted schools to stay open.
Is it any wonder that in the end, Matt Hancock rubbed too many people up the wrong way and was caught out indulging in close personal contact with one of his own advisors? I forgot, that’s called ‘falling in love’ in Mattspeak.
Matt Hancock ran his covid policy-making on social media with people he could push around and it has proved it be yet another major blunder – millions of words he’ll find hard to explain away because of other participants who witnessed his responses.
Following the revelations, an official spokesperson did not deny Rishi Sunak uses WhatsApp. Social media, which is all about being heard and seen (whether you have anything useful to contribute) has exerted an unhealthy grip on governemnt. MP’s sit texting and tweeting during debates in the Commons instead of contributing anything meaningful.
Perhaps the current humiliation of Matt Hancock will force politicians to stop acting like teenagers and put their phones away.
They might even manage a real conversation about how we got in this mess.
