Through a glass darkly. Wasn’t it ironic, said the Conservative William Wragg, that so many Labour MPs who had previously dismissed Dominic Cummings as a Herod were now hailing the prime minister’s former chief adviser as some kind of prophet? Er, maybe ... But it was also noticeable how many Tories, who had once seen Dom as some kind of terrifying, omnipotent genius, were now so quick to denounce him as a fraud. After all, without Cummings there would probably have been no Brexit and no 80-seat majority in the 2019 election. After Matt Hancock was accused of being a serial liar who should have been sacked on many occasions, Thursday’s urgent question from his Labour shadow, Jon Ashworth, could have made for a tricky hour for the health secretary. Instead it was something of a breeze as Matt was love-bombed by a succession of Tory MPs – the government benches were almost (socially distanced) full, while the opposition benches were nearly empty – who had little interest in mistakes that might have been made in the past. It wasn’t the best of looks when tens of thousands of people may have died unnecessarily, but you couldn’t fault their loyalty. Not that Ashworth didn’t give it his best shot to follow up on Cummings’ allegations. He said that either they were true, in which case Boris Johnson was unfit for office and Hancock had misled his colleagues, or the prime minister had brought a liar and a fantasist into No 10. The thought that both things could be true didn’t seem to have occurred to him. It was just that Hancock refused to engage with any of the substance beyond insisting that he had never lied to anyone. Which was almost certainly a lie. He’s a government minister, after all. He also noticeably refused to give a direct answer to whether he had lied to Boris and senior officials about hospital patients being tested before being released into care homes. What he wanted to do was focus on saving lives – his own among them – and vaccinating the population. It made you wonder what the vaccines minister was supposed to be doing. Jeremy Hunt, the joint chair of the select committee that had questioned Cummings for seven hours the day before, set the tone for what followed. While acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations, he was not going to engage with them until the documentary evidence was supplied to substantiate them. It was just all a bit too grubby for him. And, besides, he’d never much liked Dom. So what he wanted was for Hancock to get on with sorting out the India variant – he was far too polite to suggest the government might have made a bad situation worse by failing to put India on the red list until far too late – and doing what he could to open up the country on 21 June. Thereafter, despite a few slightly hostile interventions from the opposition, it was all one-way traffic. Several Tory MPs thanked him for visiting their constituencies, while others begged him to bestow his blessing on theirs. Andrew Murrison pointed to a yawning gap between Cummings’ evidence and the “balanced” report of the National Audit Office; it’s possible Murrison hasn’t read the NAO report as it concluded the UK was woefully unprepared for the pandemic. Meanwhile, Andrew Mitchell reckoned it was far too early to have any sort of inquiry and that sort of thing should wait until next year at the earliest. This is not the view of the bereaved families, but it was all music to Hancock’s ears and he bounced out of the chamber looking almost his old Tiggerish self for the first time in weeks. A little love goes a long way with Matt. Though not as far as he would like. Later in the afternoon, Hancock found himself centre stage once again, taking a press conference whose sole purpose seemed to be to prove that he was still a credible person to take a press conference as he didn’t have any news to pass on other than that the India variant was now the dominant strain. Something he had already announced in the Commons earlier that day and which had led the lunchtime news bulletins. Predictably, most of the questions from journalists were on Cummings and, in particular, the allegation he had dodged during the urgent Commons question on whether he had lied to the prime minister about testing patients released into care homes. Matt tried to keep it short and sweet by repeating the same answer over and over again and allowing no followups, though he looked a little put out when the technology failed and Sky and the Mirror got a second bite. But the answers were still the same. He had committed to testing patients but there hadn’t initially been the capacity to do so. It wasn’t entirely clear if he believed that committing to do something was the same as having done it or he didn’t know whether he had lied to Boris or not. Or possibly both. Either way, he sounded a great deal less plausible and far more shifty than he would have liked. Nor could he give a direct response when asked if he still retained the confidence of the prime minister. Rather he just blathered on about talking to Boris and being committed to dealing with the pandemic. Which in Door Matt-speak presumably means he thinks the pandemic is as good as over. Still, on the bright side, Hancock could probably reflect that he was safer in his job now than he had been for some time. He and Johnson were now in this together. And as much as the prime minister might want to reshuffle him, he had his hands tied. Because were he to do so, it would look as if Cummings had been right all along. • Join John Crace and Marina Hyde in conversation with Anushka Asthana as part of our digital festival on Tuesday 8 June. Book tickets here