It came billed as the first in a series of Call the Cabinet with Nick Ferrari on LBC radio. But just how many weeks it will last is anyone’s guess as most ministers can barely be trusted to complete a coherent sentence let alone go head to head with one of the sharpest presenters on radio. Thirty minutes with Gavin Williamson or Priti Patel? I just can’t see anyone in Downing Street imagining that would be a good idea. First up, though, was Matt Hancock. Of course it was. Matt isn’t just about the closest thing No 10 has to a safe pair of hands apart from Rishi Sunak (and there was no way the chancellor was going to appear; Boris would veto him on the grounds he might be too good) and he is also pathologically hot-wired to be unable to refuse. Put a microphone in front of Tigger, his natural enthusiasm gets the better of him and he just can’t say no. Even after all the beatings he has taken over the past few months. Last week, Hancock had broken with tradition by turning up for an interview in a brand new powder-blue tie, but for LBC he had reverted to his tired and trusted lucky pink number. Just as well as Ferrari immediately had the health secretary on the back foot by pointing out that the UK had just registered its highest number of coronavirus cases for months. Poor Matt was torn between wanting to play down the situation – most of the ill were from the younger demographic – and stick to the government’s preferred message that it was about time people started to go back to work to buy some sandwiches from Pret a Manger and acknowledging that it was indeed a bit of a worry as the same thing had happened in France and Spain a couple of weeks ago and their rates of hospital admission were now increasing rapidly. In the end, Tigger did what Tigger so often does. He hedged his bets. “Have you lost control?” Yeah but no but yeah but no. Ferrari then went to his first caller, a Francis from Twickenham who had been shielding and was worried about his daughter going back to school. “How old is your daughter?” Hancock asked. “Fourteen,” said Francis. Tigger visibly relaxed. There was little risk from 14-year-olds as it was mainly the 17 to 21-year-olds who weren’t obeying the social distancing guidelines, he said. Francis didn’t seem wholly convinced Hancock had understood that not only might his daughter bump into the odd 17-year-old at school or on public transport and might catch the virus that way but that she might pass it on to him. But he had to make do with assurances that everything would probably be OK. Then came the Brexit question that Hancock had been dreading. Terry from Birmingham worked for a medical devices company and wanted to be certain that the recent “no deal” noises coming out of Downing Street weren’t going to have a detrimental effect both on his job and on the nation’s health. “Well, the good news, Terry, is that we have a deal already,” said Matt, “and so, even if we have no further deal, we made an agreement for the actual exit from the EU at the end of January this year.” Um ... yes. Except it’s a deal that Boris Johnson now appears to be keen on unilaterally ripping up. And binning the Northern Ireland protocol in the process. It turned out that when the prime minister had been caught on camera telling a Northern Ireland trade delegation that they could just throw away any customs declarations that came their way he wasn’t joking after all. It was actually government policy. Under Boris, any international treaty the UK had signed could be binned whenever it became an inconvenience. Which didn’t exactly fill anyone with confidence that he could be trusted on any future free trade agreements. But this was all way above Matt’s pay grade. He started stammering, repeating himself and generally lapsing into total incoherence. There was still a good chance of the UK signing a Canada-style deal – something that had taken the EU the best part of seven years – from a standing start in the next month or so, providing the rest of the EU were stupid enough to take us at our word. But if we couldn’t pull this off, then we had a fully prepared alternative in an Australian deal. As in no deal at all. Though with any luck we wouldn’t notice just how bad that would be as the economy would be tanking from the coronavirus crisis anyway.
After questions on care homes and the travel industry that Tigger was also unable to answer sensibly, Nick from Nottingham called to ask how come the world-beating track and trace had advised him to go to Dundee as his nearest coronavirus testing centre. Er ... Scotland was lovely at this time of year and the adviser had obviously thought that the 700-mile round journey might cheer him up a bit. But if Nick didn’t fancy that Matt would try to guarantee that no one had to go more than 150 miles there and back to get a test. And taking the train wouldn’t be a problem as most were barely 25% full. The interview ended in pantomime. Literally, with Hancock all but promising a vaccine in the next two months and a full season of Christmas fun. Oh no it won’t, Ferrari muttered. “Oh yes it will,” said Hancock, not entirely convincingly. “Cheer up,” said his special adviser on the way out. “At least you weren’t eviscerated by Nick Robinson on the Today programme like George Eustice. Poor old Useless was left trying to explain how a 40% tariff on agricultural products would be a good outcome in a no-deal Brexit. Not even you could have talked your way optimistically out of that.”