Boris Johnson Was Compelled To Accept Health Secretary Matt Hancock's Resignation

 

Boris Johnson was pressured to receive Matt Hancock's resignation after fellow Cabinet ministers warned they were unwilling to assist him in public.

Tory sources stated the Prime Minister, who fought to keep the Health Secretary in his job, was warned by party whips that aid had 'drained away' after he admitted breaking his very own lockdown policies over his affair with a married aide.

No Cabinet ministers voiced support for Mr Hancock on social media, even after the PM backed him to remain on Friday and stated he 'considered the matter closed'.

A Cabinet source informed the Mail: 'To be fair to the Prime Minister, his automated reflex is to attempt to save people rather than throwing them to the wolves every time there's a Twitter storm. But I assume in this case it was apparent on Friday that this could not end any other way.

'What's p****d people off is Matt's sheer hypocrisy. He's set the policies and not observed them. He's put his mistress on the payroll.

'And when Professor Ferguson was in a comparable position, he tried to set the police on him.

'That's why no-one was prepared to break sweat to save him. His credibility was shot – everyone could see that aside from the Prime Minister. And no-one wanted to risk their personal credibility via backing him.'

Tory MPs additionally started to turn against Mr Hancock over the weekend as they were deluged with complaints from constituents about his conduct.

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen stated the PM had made a misjudgment in initially attempting to maintain him in post.

'Loyalty is normally a virtue,' he said. 'But it grew to become clear within hours that Matt Hancock was losing the confidence of the public.

'A lot of colleagues raised that with the Chief Whip and No 10 on Saturday morning. The moment he lost public confidence, how could he stand up and say people have to adhere to these policies when he had broken them himself?' Mr Hancock quit on Saturday night, round forty hours after CCTV pictures emerged of him in a passionate embrace in his office with glamourous married aide Gina Coladangelo.

In his resignation letter, which followed private talks in No 10 with the PM, he stated he did not want to 'distract attention' from efforts to battle Covid.

In reply, Mr Johnson said he could be 'very proud' of his record all through the pandemic.

No 10 sources stated the Prime Minister had only agreed 'reluctantly' to accept his resignation. Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis yesterday stated Mr Hancock had 'made the right judgment' in quitting.

In a sign of the anger his behavior has caused, Mr Lewis was challenged by Sky News host Trevor Phillips over the PM's fight to maintain him in his job.

Mr Phillips stated hundreds of people had been prevented from attending his daughter Sushila's funeral due to the fact of Covid legal guidelines signed off by Mr Hancock. He informed Mr Lewis: 'The pictures that we saw (of Mr Hancock) were of an encounter on May 6. On May 11 my household buried my daughter who had died not of Covid but during the lockdown.

'Three hundred of our household and pals turned up online but most of them were not allowed to be at the graveside even though it was in the open air because of the rule of 30, because of the instruction by Mr Hancock.

'Now the subsequent time one of you tells me what to do in my private life, explain to me why I shouldn't just tell you where to get off?'

Startled, Mr Lewis responded: 'I accept and understand the frustration, even the anger, people have. It's additionally why what Matt did was wrong.