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Mar 4 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
🔴NEW: Leaked WhatsApp messages reveal how health secretary hoped to shock public into complying with ever-changing lockdown rules

Read this front page story here ⬇️
#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles
🔴 Throughout the course of the pandemic, officials and ministers wrestled with how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions.

One weapon in their arsenal was fear
🗣 “We frighten the pants off everyone,” Matt Hancock suggested during one WhatsApp message with his media adviser
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
💬 WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph show how several members of Mr Hancock’s team engaged in a kind of “Project Fear”, in which they spoke of how to utilise “fear and guilt” to make people obey lockdown
🔴 An Imperial College survey of Covid infections in the community – called the React programme and led by the eminent professor Lord Darzi – provided “positive” news for Mr Hancock and his team
📉 The study they referred to appeared to have been a survey showing “decreasing prevalence” of Covid through May and an R number – the reproduction rate of the virus – of just 0.57.

The study was in line with an Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey
But when the media focused on a separate report by Public Health England and Cambridge University showing a high transmission rate in some parts of the country - prompting speculation local lockdowns could follow - Mr Hancock said: “That’s no bad thing”
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
📅 With recorded Covid cases now down to just 689, the Government was days away from reopening pubs, restaurants and hairdressing salons
But on June 30 2020, Leicester had just gone into a local lockdown.

💬In a WhatsApp group called “Local Action Committee”, Emma Dean, Mr Hancock’s special adviser on policy, reported back to the group a rumour that Milton Keynes may be the next town plunged into a local lockdown
🔴Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, Mr Hancock’s media adviser, replied that it would not be “unhelpful” for the public to think they could be next
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
Read more of this latest entry in #TheLockdownFiles here ⬇️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

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More from @Telegraph

The Telegraph Profile picture
Mar 4
Your latest stories from the Telegraph’s #TheLockdownFiles:

🔴Leak reveals how Johnson veered from lockdown sceptic to zealot
🔴Hancock's campaign to remove NHS chief revealed
🔴and 10 things we’ve learned so far

Follow the latest revelations here ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/lockdown-… Image
💬 New WhatsApp messages show then prime minister repeatedly changed his mind depending on who he had been talking to.

Read the story here ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles
🔴 Ministers tried to remove the head of the NHS just five days after the first Covid-19 case was detected in the UK.

Read more here ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles
Read 4 tweets
The Telegraph Profile picture
Mar 4
⏰Inside Matt Hancock’s 41-hour scramble to save his career after Gina Coladangelo affair revealed

Messages uncovered in #TheLockdownFiles show the former health secretary forever changing his statement on the affair as he tried to rescue career

Thread👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0… Inside Matt Hancock’s 41-hour scramble to save his career
🔴 It was 1am when the pictures were published online of Matt Hancock and his aide Gina Coladangelo in an intimate embrace in his ministerial office.

Just three minutes later the health secretary and aides began a frantic scramble to save his political career
📞Hancock had been expecting the news to break, having received a call from Victoria Newton, the editor of the Sun at 6.53pm on June 24

📕In his book he says he phoned Mr Johnson to inform him of the affair before setting off home to tell his wife, Martha, and their children
Read 10 tweets
The Telegraph Profile picture
Mar 4
🇺🇦 Bakhmut’s mayor has said Russian forces are turning Bakhmut into Mariupol as Ukrainian troops face “severe pressure” from Russian shelling in the city today

Stay up-to-date with the latest here ⤵️
🇷🇺 Russia's defence minister has inspected the front line in eastern Ukraine and awarded troops on a rare visit to the country as the battle of Bakhmut intensifies

Follow our live blog for more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
🇺🇦 Justice ‘is personal’ says Zelensky after talks with EU

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that holding Russia and its leadership to account for war crimes ‘is personal’

Read more on our live blog ⤵️
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Read 5 tweets
The Telegraph Profile picture
Mar 4
Latest from the Telegraph’s
#TheLockdownFiles:

🔴 Inside Hancock’s 41-hour scramble to save his career after affair revealed

🗣 Was I right to leak Hancock's messages? | Oakeshott

📷 The picture that shows No 10 champagne gathering

The latest ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/lockdown-…
🔴 Inside Hancock’s 41-hour scramble to save his career after affair revealed

WhatsApp messages show former health secretary forever changing his statement on the affair as he tried to rescue career

The latest ⤵️

telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
🗣 'Was I right to leak Matt Hancock's WhatsApp messages? Here's what you told me'

'Since the Lockdown Files were published, the reaction from ordinary people has been astonishing' | Writes Isabel Oakeshott

The latest ⤵️

telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
Read 4 tweets
The Telegraph Profile picture
Mar 3
Your latest stories from the Telegraph’s #TheLockdownFiles:

⏰ Matt Hancock: 'We didn't break the f---ing law'

🔴 The WhatsApp messages that expose Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock’s lockdown power struggle

🗣 Hancock hoped Covid could propel career ‘into next league’
Follow the latest revelations here ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/lockdown-…
⏰ It was 1am when the pictures were published online of Matt Hancock and his aide Gina Coladangelo in an intimate embrace in his ministerial office.

Read more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
Read 5 tweets
The Telegraph Profile picture
Mar 3
🔴 NEW: The WhatsApp messages that expose Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock’s lockdown power struggle

#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles

Thread 🧵⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
🔴 Matt Hancock sought to enlist the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, in a plan to outflank Rishi Sunak during repeated rows over Covid restrictions.

Read more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
🔴 Mr Hancock and Mr Sunak were at odds during the pandemic over the extent of lockdown measures, with the then health secretary in favour of tighter restrictions than the then chancellor.

Read more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…
Read 5 tweets

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