'Hancock betrayed families of Covid victims - we need to crack on with inquiry'

04 March 2023 , 15:56

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Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock giving an update on the Covid pandemic in May 2021 (Image: Getty Images)

I had my first virtual reality experience this week.

As a terrible old Luddite I try to avoid new tech such as chatbots, avatars and AI.

But as I love surrealist art I decided to brave a Salvador Dali “Cybernetics” experience. At an old warehouse in East London I put on VR goggles and stepped into the metaverse to find myself on a ship, navigating a nightmare journey through giant insects, flying tigers and burning giraffes.

It was fascinating but unsettling, like three other digital breakthroughs I’ve been reading about. Cybernetic scientists have created motorised body parts for humans, including tentacle-like arms and roving hands.

Engineers in Edinburgh have invented artificial skin to give unfeeling robots sensations. And the Chinese have developed rubbery moving lips that plug into your mobile and let you snog your lover remotely.

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The former Health Secretary on I'm a Celebrity

That’s creepy. And very nearly a whole new Matt Hancock. CyberMatt, the first AI politician. As opposed to a human one so lacking in intelligence that he gave a journalist 100,000 WhatsApp messages revealing his Covid malfunction. Messages that expose the truth behind the Tory Government’s pandemic strategy – or rather policy cobbled together in the group chats of a chummy old boys’ network.

Bitchy, buck-passing or back-slapping, messages containing beer emojis and bad calculations.

Exchanges that show life-and-death decisions weren’t “driven by the science” but steered by No10’s spin doctors. And while the former Health Secretary was banging on about the “protective ring around care homes” he and his ­incompetent colleagues were merely covering their own a***s.

Isabel Oakeshott leaked Hancock's WhatsApp messages (ITV)

Hancock claims he’s “hugely disappointed and sad” that Isabel Oakeshott leaked his messages in “a massive betrayal and breach of trust”.

Though not quite as sad and disappointed as the millions who lost loved ones while he broke his own lockdown rules to grope and snog his mistress. That’s what I’d call betrayal and breach of trust. This damning WhatsApp catalogue has exposed mistakes that potentially cost tens of thousands of lives. We urgently need to crack on with the Covid-19 public inquiry – to hold ministers and officials to account.

Hancock may still be looking back through his rose-tinted pandemic goggles.

But those who had to navigate the nightmare deserve the REAL picture.

Rachael Bletchly