Bookies have slashed odds on Matt Hancock being offered a place on celebrity dating show Love Island, after the health secretary’s tryst with an aide got the full red top tabloid treatment.
“Hopeless” Hancock may well decide to take up the offer, for life on the British Isles is likely to be unbearable for quite some time.
The pictures, if you can stomach looking, are off the cringe scale – but the implications are much more serious.
Did Hancock breach the ministerial code in hiring aide Gina Coladangelo, who it turns out is an old university pal.
There’s also the fact Hancock was telling the nation last May, when the pictures were apparently taken, not to see loved ones and stay socially distanced – all while privately embracing his office staff.
EXCLUSIVE on today's front page: Shocking evidence of Matt Hancock's secret affair with closest aide caught on camera https://t.co/bImEbaIfGL pic.twitter.com/01SXiCIbG7
— The Sun (@TheSun) June 25, 2021
The beleaguered minister, who was branded “useless” by the prime minister in private messages last year, has not been shy in calling for others to go after the press unearthed stories about Covid breaches.
Will he practice what he preached? Apparently not. In a statement issued this afternoon, it would appear the health secretary is – in full Dominic Cummings, Barnard Castle fashion – going to try and style this one out.
Like a naughty public school boy, Hancock told the nation that he was “very sorry” and promised to redouble his focus on the Covid response.
Boris Johnson, who’s career has been dogged by stories of extramarital affairs, was satisfied – saying he now “considers the matter closed”. He may well do, but it’s another matter entirely as to whether the public do.