I.f it looks like it could kill … You know the government ‘s direction to visit your friends over Christmas without visiting them wants trouble. I know that the government ‘s direction to visit my friends over Christmas without visiting them is definitely a piece of hopeless messages. But in particular, Matt Hancock knows it too.
But the health secretary sold a soul to Boris Johnson a long time ago. There was an early period in the pandemic when Matt seemed to be one of the few cabinet members working with integrity. Someone who was willing to call the prime minister ‘s rubbish out that the coronavirus was going to be in three months: or, when that date had come and gone, to be all over Christmas. A minister was partially preparing with the country about the severity of the crisis, the government’s response failed and promised to do what it could to improve the situation.
But sometime around the summer, Hancock’s zero failed him. Although it never sank to the extent of Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had earlier criticized Unicef today for feeding Britain’s hungry children, it became more important than telling the truth. Matt became Matt’s door. Another piece of Westminster flotsam. He did not stand for Sage’s advice proposing a September-round break-in. And he let himself stand next to an original defense system that he knew would not be appropriate. And now he seems to have convinced himself of the merits of the newly developed immune system. Somewhere in his region there must be a picture of him with a soul crouching from the inside, because on the outside it looks very similar to each other. If a little more short-lived and drains his natural commitment.
In what he hopes is his last Covid statement of the year, Door Matt was back in the Commons on Thursday to announce the fortnightly changes to tension rates across the country. And he didn’t look so happy about it, because even though he sees a Christmas chicken. After his usual space-filled introduction of the virus becoming a devastating disease, he now announced that full loads of extra people would move up to level 3. On Saturday, 68% of the country would be under the maximum levels of constraints and just three areas would move down. Bristol and north Somerset would be reduced to level 2 while Herefordshire would receive level 1 luxury.
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth was relatively skeptical about the changes as they were largely in line with expectations. But he questioned the government’s five-day Christmas Market Zone. Hancock had promised that the virus would be controlled by the government and that it would not risk being spread over Christmas but that was exactly what was likely to happen.
So would he reconsider government rules over Christmas? Ashworth said he is out of duty rather than expected as he has also long since ignored that Hancock has a mind of his own. He’s reached where he no longer needs to pre-report any statement because he knows exactly what the health secretary is going to say even before Door Matt does. As we all are. I wish for a week when I can sketch the secretary of health putting his beliefs about coronavirus at stake.
At that moment Hancock jumped the shark. The Christmas rules were perfectly clear to everyone and it was up to everyone to take personal responsibility for what they did. If you want to kill your older friends, go ahead and be his guest. But if you wanted to save them for another year, think twice before visiting them. Matt’s door was slammed about trying to do what was right for the country. It was up to everyone to make their own decisions about what level of risk they were happy to take over at Christmas. And if you died, you died. Just don’t complain to him.
Here the logic began to fall apart, as Hancock began to add the same sense of personal responsibility to the connection levels. The three divisions that had come down a row had done so because they had come together as a community to work together. Which admitted to some extent that he thought the rest of the country had gone wild and was just doing as he pleased – with no regard for government instructions – and that was the the reason they had either stayed in the same row or beaten up to the highest one. It did not appear to have occurred to him for a second that the majority of the population complied with the guidelines and that the rules themselves may have been inappropriate in suspending a level. the disease from increasing.
The rest of the session passed peacefully. Liam Fox congratulated Hancock for making sense and choosing his north Somerset constituency to level 2, and saw a number of MPs from Manchester and elsewhere in the north, who involved in phase 3, that the rates of disease in their areas were now lower than those in southern areas that had been in tier 2 just a week or two ago.
But there was little anger in the debate. Almost all the MPs who just appeared were retiring inevitably and could not force themselves to start a fight that they knew they were sure to just lose. before Christmas. For now they would take the penalty and give Door Matt a fair go. And God knows Hancock needed it. For if the vaccination was delayed and the personal duty of the people could not fill the vacancy in the government ‘s own system of government, it was certain that hell would have to be paid in January and February.