Just under two years ago, Matt Hancock dreamed up the idea of appearing as a hologram for his speech as culture secretary at the Conservative party conference. Today his wish more or less came true, as he fronted the first ever virtual Downing Street press conference with questions from journalists being broadcast in remotely. By the end, Hancock must have wished he hadn’t bothered, as it turned into yet another communications farce. Carry on up the Corona. Left hand, meet right hand. He might as well have left the presser to Boris Johnson. The prime minister seems to be able to contradict himself at will from one day to the next and the only fallout seems to be that his approval ratings jump by 20%. Go figure. Give Boris another five days of major cock-ups and he will have 140% of the country fully behind him. To be fair, Hancock started well enough. This wasn’t the boyish Tigger, full of mindless optimism and enthusiasm for any mere trifle: it was the more serious, grown-up, shaving-twice-a-week Hancock. The health secretary who, unlike the prime minister, doesn’t have to make an effort to look like he gives a toss. Matt leaves no one in any doubt that each death matters to him: even if he does still occasionally look a little bewildered that, after 10 years of heavy-duty cuts by successive Tory governments, the NHS isn’t in better shape to cope with the coronavirus crisis. He is the man you can endearingly rely on to strain every cliche to prove his commitment. There were no histrionics or excessive hand-clasping – “What will these hands ne’er be clean?” – on Boris’s statement the night before. Instead he stuck to some basic facts. The number of deaths overnight. The introduction of a Mum’s and Dad’s Army. The recruitment of 250,000 volunteers. A new temporary 4,000-bed hospital in London’s East End. More antibody testing. So far, so good. It all rather fell apart, though, once the questions started. The previous day, Boris had insisted that everyone should remain at home unless they absolutely needed to go to work. Now it seemed that the message had changed. If your boss really wanted you to work on a construction site, then it was perfectly reasonable for you to squeeze on to an overcrowded tube or bus – which were already running reduced services due to staff self-isolating – because once you had got to work, you’d be free to breathe fresh air two metres away from the bloke standing right next to you. At this point, Matt started to look a little twitchy. He is a man of some conscience and insight and his body has its own inbuilt bullshit detector when he’s forced to parrot a party line he knows to be contradictory. Neither Boris nor Michael Gove would have broken sweat at talking such bollocks. In desperation, Matt looked to Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, to bail him out. She didn’t look thrilled at the hospital pass, but took the hit anyway. She was certain construction bosses couldn’t possibly be putting profit before public health and all had nothing but their workers’ best interests at heart. There were plenty of great bosses leading by example. Mike Ashley, Tim Martin … Harries also unexpectedly found herself in the role of agony aunt as she was asked for guidance on how couples who were not cohabiting should behave. “Oooh,” she said, playing for time. Perhaps couples could try just seeing each other now and again and practise a little self-restraint. Or if they really couldn’t keep their hands off one another for the next few months, then maybe they should try moving in together. It didn’t exactly sound like official Public Health England guidelines. But who knows? I can’t help feeling that therapists and divorce lawyers are going to be coining it in once the pandemic lockdown is all over.
The one person playing an absolute blinder throughout the press conference was Stephen Powis, the medical director of NHS England. Principally by virtue of barely saying a word. His only contribution was to make some non-committal remarks about the testing of various drugs and the need to learn more about their efficacy. Having said that, he went back to staring at his shoes. Less is more. Many politicians could learn a lot from him. Towards the end, Hancock found himself in difficulties once more. First by failing to explain why it had taken two months for the UK to finally get round to buying 3.5m testing kits, and then by saying there had been 7m movements of protective clothing. It wasn’t clear if this was the same item of clothing being moved 7m times or 1m items being moved seven times. Matt also totally dodged the question of whether the UK’s delay in implementing the same lockdown measures as other European countries – hell, we hadn’t gone to all the trouble of leaving the EU only to carry on following its petty, bureaucratic regulations – had caused more deaths. Nor did he explain why we weren’t joining the joint EU initiative to make more ventilators. Only proper UK oxygen for us. Instead, the health secretary chivalrously left it to Harries to mutter something about science not always being exact. Over the past few weeks, it feels as if Boris’s version of UK science has been less exact than most. Time will tell. Harries made a throat-slit gesture and Hancock abruptly called proceedings to a halt. At least he wouldn’t have to do that again for another week. And when he did, he’d make damn sure it was his hologram taking the flak.