THE Matt Hancock affair and the fallout from the former Health Secretary’s behaviour dominated the newspaper comment sections.
The Daily Mail
Stephen Glover asked why Boris Johnson hadn’t sacked Matt Hancock as soon as his ‘energetic clinch’ with Gina Coladangelo — in blatant contravention of government regulations — came to light.
“Given his own rackety private life over the past two decades, the Prime Minister may have felt he couldn’t fire Mr Hancock without being accused of hypocrisy,” he said. “But the main charge against the now former Health Secretary wasn’t that he had betrayed his wife of 15 years, whom he has now brutally dumped, but that he had flouted regulations he had applied with officious zeal.”
He said the former Health Secretary was a Grade A hypocrite who had been caught red-handed breaking his own rules.
“We should hardly be surprised by these double standards. After all, in his own private life Boris has long cut corners and scorned rules that constrain lesser mortals. It’s true of his endless sexual shenanigans, and it’s true of the way he runs his finances.”
The Daily Express
Leo McKinstry said the scandal of Hancock’s affair with his aide Gina Coladangelo marked a dangerous point for Boris Johnson’s embattled administration, giving new weight to accusations of Tory sleaze and double standards.
“By his breach of the very Covid rules that he enthusiastically imposed on Britain, Hancock has fostered a growing mood of public disillusionment,” he said. “As one Cabinet source put it at the weekend: “He has been the Puritan-in-Chief and now it turns out that he is a massive hypocrite.””
The Independent
Victoria Richards said she stood in awe of Matt Hancock’s wife Martha who has remained cool and dignified, ‘her face giving nothing at all away of the revelations of the past week .’
“We can only imagine what it must feel like to know that the world is watching and waiting – even gagging – for some public display of emotion; for her to show the impact of the devastation; for a stray tear or all-out breakdown or bitter, angry rant,” she said. “Bravo to Martha for not giving certain sections of our media (and our society) what they so clearly crave – which is, as it has always been, the very public dismantling of a woman.”
She said when a man behaves badly attention always turns to the women - the one he ‘left’ and the one he ‘chose.’
“We both fear and admire Martha Hancock. We despise the way she’s being treated, yet find it difficult to look away. At some level we understand that her plight is such that any one of us could experience; that it’s just a poor throw of the dice that has landed her here – heartbroken – with the world watching. What we really need to do is leave her alone.”
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