The news that Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been caught out cheating on his wife and flagrantly disobeying the covid social distancing regulations that have been imposed on and mostly obeyed by the British public, is in my view a massive story. Not only does it expose the sort of hypocrisy that goes down badly with Britons who are having to cope with the burdens of a government lockdown policy that may or may not have worked, but it’s also one of the biggest security leaks in recent years.

The story, which was broken exclusively by the Sun newspaper, concerns married Matt Hancock being shown in a clinch with lobbyist Gina Coladangelo who is also married. Ordinarily a politician being caught in flagrante with a woman who is not his wife might not be the massive story these days that it might have been in the past, after all this is not the 1950’s. But this case has added aspects that elevate it beyond what would normally be tabloid tittle tattle.

One of these aspects is as previously mentioned, the hypocrisy of Hancock canoodling with a woman outside of his relationship with his wife at a time when the government had specifically told the British people that in order to prevent the spread of covid, people should forego the pleasure of sex outside of their married or long term relationships. Yet here we see the man who is in charge of the Government’s pandemic response playing hide the sausage with another man’s wife. This isn’t just common or garden hypocrisy, it’s 24 carat, deluxe diamond encrusted hypocrisy. To paraphrase an old advertising slogan: ‘this is not ordinary hypocrisy, it’s M and S hypocrisy.’

However it’s the security implications of this case that bother me the most. There are claims that the images showing Hancock in an embrace with Coladeangelo were from security cameras situated inside Health Department offices.

It is not known at this time whether or not these images were leaked from an internal source in the Health Department or if they were hacked by third parties such as a foreign government or whatever. What is known however is that someone with access to cameras that might concievably have been situated in a highly sensitive area of the Department exists has put these images out there for the press and the public. This is a massive security leak in particular if it is subsequently revealed that the images came from cameras where Ministers and their aides might be examining security classified documents. The big worry that people maybe should have is whether this wasn’t an internal leak but the CCTV system has been hacked either by State or Non State actors.

If the leak has come from an internal source then whoever has leaked this either doesn’t care if they are caught, they just hate Hancock that much, or are in a position where they are unlikely to be caught. Whitehall leak probes are I understand pretty thorough and investigators will be combing through lists of all those who might have had access or who could have gained access to these images, which leads me to believe that if the leaker is internal then it’s either someone who doesn’t care or who cannot be traced to the leak of the images. In any event, whether the leak is internal or external, I suspect that the boys and girls from Thames House and the Cheltenham secret doughnut will be carrying out intense personnel and electronic security sweeps of the Department of Health’s London offices as soon as they possibly can.

We could be seeing the last hours of Matt Hancock’s time as Health Secretary passing before our very eyes as the Prime Minister has uttered the fateful words heard by many a minister before they either are sacked or forced to resign which are: ‘I have every confidence in the Minister’.

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P.S. On a funny note, this story of the indiscretions of Mr Hancock have been the cause for the creation of some really funny memes, a small selection of which are below.

And my personal favourite so far is this…………..