the times | Saturday August 1 2020 2GM 39
News
My Week Matt Hancock*
monday
The rest of cabinet seem puzzled over
the new travel rules. Which is odd,
because they’re crystal clear to me.
“You can go to the Azores, but you
shouldn’t,” agrees Dominic Raab.
Then he frowns. “Or maybe the
opposite.”
“What does the transport secretary
think?” asks Boris, but we all look
around the room and nobody can
remember who even got that job.
“If you think about it,” points out
Priti Patel, “going abroad is
unpatriotic, anyway.”
“Bucket and spade,” agrees the PM
vaguely. “And so on.”
“Bits of Durham are nice,” says
Dominic Cummings, who is in a
striped unitard and spats.
“Look,” I say. “Why are you all
making this so hard? People who are
away can stay away. So long as when
they come back they stay away.”
Everybody is frowning.
“Seriously,” I say. “This stuff is so
simple. And the same everywhere.
Unless you’re in Leicester.”
“Why the hell,” says the PM,
“would I go to Leicester?”
“How are your eyes?” says
Cummings.
tuesday
Cabinet again. It’s looking like Europe
is having a second wave. And I’ve
been thinking about all the plaudits
Germany got for their handling of
the first one. And the way we got
none at all.
“Obviously we got everything
right last time,” I say, “but we
should still do the exact opposite this
time.”
Everybody agrees with this analysis
wholeheartedly.
“You could have waited until I was
home,” says Grant Shapps, who has
Zoomed in from Spain.
“Oh, he’s the transport secretary,”
I say, remembering.
“The thing is,” says the PM,
“we can’t fix the mistakes of the
past.”
“Unless we sack him,” suggests
Cummings.
What the PM means, I
interject, is that we now
realise we need to
quarantine people
coming here from
certain dangerous
countries.
“Can’t we give
them a test?”
inquires Rishi
Sunak.
“We don’t
need a test,”
snorts Priti
Patel. “They talk
funny. It’s
obvious.”wednesday
Now I’m telling
cabinet that we
may have to ask
people to isolate for
longer.“But I’ve just got home,” complains
Grant, on screen.
“Much longer,” I say, ignoring him.
Then Cummings, who is dressed as
Dusty Bin, says that some guy from
the British Medical Association has
been telling MPs that our messaging
is all confused.
“And we should probably have
some response,” he yawns, “even if
it’s just that all medicine is
bullshit.”
“No time for that,” says the
PM. “Because we also need to
talk about my new strategy to
fight obesity and overcome the
threat from Rishi Sunak.”
Everybody looks at him.
“Excuse me?” says Rishi.
“From coronavirus!”
says Boris. “I meant.
Sorry. Thinking out
loud. Awkward.
Move on.”thursday
Late at night, I
call the PM.
“There’s a
spike,” I say.
“And we need to
immediately stop
people visiting each
other’s homes in the
north.”
“What if they’re
visiting their own
second homes in
the north?” says
Dominic Cummings,who is on the line, too.
“Obviously fine,” I tell him.
Then the PM says he’s not so
bothered about this, because he
doesn’t really know anybody in the
north. But still, he says, we ought to
do it properly. As in, with a press
conference.
“Mmm,” I say, not really listening.
“Because the last thing you want to
do,” he says, “is just knock back half a
bottle of wine and then start tweeting
about it!”
“Ah,” I say, putting down my phone.friday
Yet another emergency cabinet
meeting. Grant is still virtual. The rest
of us spend the first five minutes
periodically freezing so that he thinks
he’s got a dodgy internet connection.
“Hello?” he shouts, waving
frantically.
Then the PM says we should stop
messing about, because he’s about to
do a press conference and he wants us
all to understand the new messaging.
“Hands, face, space!” he announces.
“Perfectly clear,” I say. “As good as
anything they’ve got in Germany.”
“Which bit of space?” says Dominic
Raab, looking at his list.
“If you like Germany so much,”
says Priti, “maybe you should go and
live there.”
“Guys?” I say. “Please. Pay attention.
We can’t ignore a second wave.”
“Actually,” says Grant, “I’ve been
waving from the start.”
*according to Hugo RifkindVoice pulls
‘antisemitic’
interview
Ben ElleryBritain’s biggest black newspaper, The
Voice, has pulled an inflammatory
interview with the rapper Wiley after
being accused of “enabling antisemi-
tism”.
Mark Ronson, the music producer,
and other prominent figures criticised
an article it published in which it asked
whether “within his ranting were there
any salient points?”
Wiley, 41, whose real name is Richard
Cowie, was banned from Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram this week
after posting a series of antisemitic
messages. He called Jewish people
“cowards and snakes” and compared
them to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Voice took down its online
version of the interview and said it “has
not, and makes it clear again, supported
or in any way condoned the outbursts
by Wiley that the Jewish community
finds offensive”. It added: “It saddens us
deeply that persons have implied that
we are antisemitic. Our long history in
the community and our track record
does not support this view.”
Ronson, who previously discussed
his pride at his Jewish background and
produced Cash in My Pocket, Wiley’s
Top 40 hit, wrote on Twitter: “Throw-
ing fuel on the fire with poorly
researched articles that perpetuate
dangerous myths by pretending to pose
questions is not the way forward.”