Lucy Dunn and Sophie Revell
It’s been off our minds for the last few weeks, but in the wake of Newmarket Town Council passing a no-confidence vote in West Suffolk MP Matt Hancock, the ex-Health Secretary’s marriage-murdering scandal is threatening to rear its head back above the pulpit.
“The shocking revelations of the former Health Secretary ‘getting it on’ with his aide threw the British public into a frenzy.”
A month has passed since Matt Hancock’s infidelity was plastered across the pages of the Sun, and almost every other newspaper besides. The shocking revelations of the former Health Secretary ‘getting it on’ with his aide threw the British public into a frenzy. Unsurprisingly, Hancock stepped down from his position, though not before the PM had expressed his support for the Cabinet minister – which, given his own personal life, also did not come as a shock.
The issue of morality became part of the online discourse surrounding Hancock’s affair, with readers not only angry at his blatant cheating on his wife, but at the fact that, to carry out the rule-breaking romance, he had also cheated his country. Some Twitter commenters, though, started asking questions about the bigger picture – or, simply: the picture itself.
The sleazy snapshot was a steal from a CCTV video taken on allegedly hidden cameras placed in Hancock’s office. So although the newspaper-come-tabloid appeared angelic in its exposé, were darker forces at play? Why was a hidden camera placed in Hancock’s room? Who leaked the CCTV? And are we all unwittingly living in an Orwellian camera-rigged society, unable to hide anything from plain sight?
Morality
Which is the bigger issue: the romance, or the recording?
Matt Hancock’s affair is bad for a number of reasons, which are not necessarily linked exclusively to infidelity. Social distancing guidelines – the very ones that Hancock helped create and push onto the country himself – were very clearly broken. After the news broke, the public recognised Hancock’s hypocrisy instantly, especially in a particularly cringeworthy interview for Sky News where he stated that only those in “established” relationships should be engaging in sexual activity and that the public should be “careful” and “sensible”. Whilst Boris Johnson spoke of his “full confidence” in Hancock, the former Health Secretary himself admitted that he had “let people down” and was “very sorry”.
However the Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, also appeared to back Hancock, as he said: “There’s a task to be done. The rules have been hard. It is everybody’s duty to follow the rules, but equally I’ve not been somebody who has criticised and condemned people when they’ve made mistakes.” Within Jenrick’s comment, though, is a hint of ‘parliamentary privilege’: whilst Jenrick or his peers may have broken the rules with little consequence, he appears not to understand that lay people who do break similar rules often face harsh consequences, in the form of police fines, for example.
“[He is] part of a party who hold ‘an arrogance that they believe they’re above the law’.”
Emily Thornberry, Labour MP, emphasised this, discussing the rule-breaking minister as being part of a party who hold “an arrogance that they believe they’re above the law”. “He should have gone a long time ago,” she said. Annelise Dodds, Labour MP, stated that “if Matt Hancock has been secretly having a relationship with an adviser in his office – who he personally appointed to a tax-payer funded role – it is a blatant abuse of power and a clear conflict of interest”. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group wrote to the Prime Minister to express how “heartbreaking” it was to see Hancock “ignoring the rules while we were unable to hug friends and family at our loved ones’ funerals”.
More recently, though, further speculation has surrounded Ms Coladangelo’s appointment as non-executive director to the Health Secretary. The job involved her having to work less than a month a year, with an annual salary of £15,000. Whilst a spokesperson for the government emphasised that Coladangelo’s job had been “made in the usual way”, following “correct procedure”, The Times found that Hancock actually failed to declare his friendship, stemming back to their time at Oxford University, when he appointed Coladangelo as an advisor.
“It is not standard procedure to have recording devices in Cabinet minister’s offices.”
And not only that, following revelations that Professor Neil Ferguson of SAGE had broken lockdown rules when having a relationship with another woman, Hancock immediately took to the podium to denounce Ferguson’s actions as “extraordinary”, emphasising that social distancing was “deadly serious” and “there for everyone”. Social distancing aside, though, what about the images themselves? According to Sky News, the camera in Hancock’s office was an “outlier”: it is not standard procedure to have recording devices in Cabinet minister’s offices. On his appointment as Health Secretary, Sajid Javid promptly disabled the office camera, and told Sky News that “I am sure there will be more to this as the whole incident is investigated.” However, the weeks have passed and the question still stands: why was there a camera there, and why was it recording?
Media
Out of the front pages, out of mind?
It has been a number of weeks since the Hancock scandal, and yet it feels as though it never happened. The flurry of news that appeared at the time of the former Health Secretary’s secret affair has been long buried in our news feeds, and whilst investigations are taking place, the country’s interest has dwindled.
“Raids took place as the video and picture footage of Hancock may have been part of an alleged data breach.”
So what has been happening since? A few weeks ago, investigators reportedly “seized computers after searches at two homes, over the leaking of [the] CCTV footage”. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) stated that raids took place as the video and picture footage of Hancock may have been part of an alleged data breach.
The Sun, who first published the images, may hold the answer, but the newspaper’s editor, Victoria Newton, stated that she would “rather go to prison” than reveal the identity of the “angry whistleblower” that first got in touch. Giving her account of events in New Statesman, Newton appears chilling in her ruthlessness: “This was an open and shut case of public interest – and a contender for story of the year.”
“Hancock has iterated the seriousness of his extramarital affair by ending his 15-year marriage.”
Hancock has iterated the seriousness of his extramarital affair by ending his 15-year marriage for the wife of Olivar Bonas owner, Oliver Tress. In the meantime, though, the ICO appears determined to get to the bottom of the leak: “[We aim] to react swiftly and effectively to investigate where there is a risk that other people may have unlawfully obtained personal data,” Steve Eckersly, Director of Investigations at the ICO commented. “We have an ongoing investigation and will not be commenting further until it is concluded.” And now, only a few days ago, Hancock has had a vote of no confidence passed against him by councillors in his constituency of West Suffolk, with the motion accusing Hancock of “hypocrisy”.
Short-lived stories
So why have our updates been so silent? It seems that this is a new talking point is the ever-decreasing lifespan of news stories as we move faster into the digital age. With each day comes the details of new events occurring across the world, and it is truly hard – unless you are a global super-virus – to stay relevant for long.
“Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what’s left.”
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Is this a positive? Perhaps. Whilst Matt Hancock likely deserved a fraction of the villainisation he received from the papers, it won’t have been pleasant. All people do bad things, and there is a time for berating someone, and a time for letting them reconcile their deeds with themselves and those closest to them.
It may be a negative, however. Will the “villains” of our society ever be truly held to account, if the pace of the news cycle continues to accelerate? On a wider level, the Matt Hancock scandal should be used as a warning to those in positions of power (Tory government, cough, cough) that you should respect, not abuse, it. In the words of Jeannette Winterson: “Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what’s left.”
As well as the accelerated news cycle of political scandals in the tabloids, politicians like Hancock may be avoiding accountability for their abuse of power due to the way that tabloids also seem to trivialise scandals once the initial shock has passed. On the 10th of July, two weeks after The Sun first broke the story, The Guardian released an article titled: “The dweeb and the hot girl: Matt Hancock’s affair belongs to an 80s movie.” Lifestyle writer Hadley Freeman described Hancock’s behaviour as though from an 80s romance and went as far as calling Gina Coladangelo his “university crush”. The article glosses over serious parts of the scandal such as Martha Hancock’s struggle with long Covid – after allegedly catching the virus from her husband – and focuses on how Coladangelo was “way out of Matt Hancock’s league”.
It echoes other headlines published across a number of national publications soon after the affair was announced. Though seemingly harmless, articles like these trivialised the affair, creating the image that Hancock was an underdog who finally bagged the woman of his dreams after years of pining. The narrative changes as fast as the news story turnaround, and suddenly we find ourselves feeling… sorry for Hancock? Whether the forces at play here are elitist or patriarchical – or both – we’ll let you decide.
The Hancock affair may simply be another in the series of government scandals we seem to have been watching on repeat for the last eighteen months, soon to be wiped from the board and replaced with the illustration of another. Or, against all odds, it may circulate back to our front pages to serve as a lesson to others. As The Sun’s Editor-in-Chief predicts: “I sense this story isn’t going to go away for Hancock or the government any time soon.”
Featured image courtesy of Roman Kraft on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes have been made to this image.
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