Hancock should've been sacked yesterday instead of resigning today. The prime minister has no principle, no judgement, no belief in the basic standards of public life.
And of course he leaves saying it's about his private life. Got nothing to do with your private life. It's to do with hypocrisy, inconsistency, cronyism and damaging public trust during a pandemic.
Several people on here have made the point that Johnson cannot sack people for failing to abide by basic standards, because that principle may then be used against him. I think that's spot on.
It's a government without principle. It can only survive if principles are considered unnecessary in political life.
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It doesn't matter that Hancock had an affair. People's sex lives are their own business. The only suitable arbiter of that stuff is them and the person they're married to.
It does feel like there's two questions to answer though. First: On breaking covid guidance through close physical contact with another individual when the health secretary was telling people they could not do that. That's really just straight up hypocrisy.
Strange law of the universe: People's cuntishness is usually inversely related to how many people they surround themselves with who call them a cunt.
You see it more and more as you get older and people become more successful. At that point, you can select your social circles so that they are filled with people who will never call you a cunt.
This is a terrible mistake. Make sure there are always people around you - old friends or new - calling you a cunt. It is your best protection against becoming a cunt.
Right, I have to say something nice about @anandMenon1 now, which I always vowed never to do.
He is, despite my fierce protestations, one of my favourite drinking partners and a much-loved friend. He also had a worse year than anyone could imagine and yet has written about it more honestly and meaningfully than anyone else could manage.
After reading it, if you feel moved to, do please donate to the hospice that cared for his mother and brother. He won't say so - on previous evidence there's a good chance he'll call you a dick - but he'll appreciate it.
Not the most important thing but that room really is dreadful. It's like the background for a really boring 90s daytime quiz show.
Hancock asked whether it's true he protected care homes from the start and "did you or did you not" tell Downing Street people leaving care homes would be tested?
Hancock answer interesting. "We committed to building the testing capacity to allow that to happen... and then we were able to introduce the policy, but we could only do that when we had the testing capacity.2
Hilariously contorted arrangements being made by Speaker on context, because the entire debate is about whether Hancock lied, but you can't state that he lied in the Chamber.
The absolute pinnacle position Hancock should have been allowed to hold is branch manager in a rural fast-food outlet.
What a day. Four straight hours of of testimony from a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood challenging the record of a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood.
The real poetry will come when the self-interested narcissist who weaponised falsehood realises he cannot inflict damage on the other self-interested narcissist who weaponised falsehood, because he undermined truth-telling as a functional quality in political discourse.