 Matt Hancock's resignation was not the result of any decision by Boris Johnson. In fact, the Prime Minister had encouraged him to stay, and the initial defences of Matt Hancock have left the government open to accusations that they do believe there is one rule for them and one rule for everyone else. You might think that in most jobs, if you've broken the rules that you yourself have set, you'd be fired. Not so if you are in Boris Johnson's cabinet. You get to decide yourself whether or not you will leave. Now, the argument that the government does seem to believe there is one rule for everyone else and one rule for them was put powerfully by Trevor Phillips on Sky. He was speaking to Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis. So, Lewis, I wouldn't normally do something like this, but I want to put a private personal question, I guess, in a way to you. Over the past two days, every cabinet minister, including you, has come out to essentially defend the Prime Minister and Matt Hancock. The pictures that we saw were of an encounter on May the 6th. On May the 11th, my family buried my daughter, who had died not of COVID, but during the lockdown. 300 of our family and friends 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 next 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. Well, I absolutely accept and understand the frustration, even the anger that people have having been through the situations they've been through. Look, as you say to other people across the country, I've lost friends, his funerals, I've not been able to go to over the last period. That is such a tragic situation for any of us to be in. And that's, I have to say, why it's so important, all of us do what we can to keep ourselves, our families, our friends, our wider community safe. It's also why that what Matt did was wrong. He acknowledged that's why he apologised immediately for his baby and acknowledged what he did was wrong. And it's also why he's taken the decision that his position was untenable and distract him from the wider work that we've all got to do to move forward in the pandemic and out of the pandemic. There's no getting away from that. And I think that's why Matt ultimately made the decision he did. As I say, I think in doing that, he's put his family and indeed all of us across the UK first, because he wants to focus as the PM does, as we all do, to be on getting out of this pandemic in the best possible way and as quickly as we can. That was a really extraordinary clip. I mean, Trevor Phillips there had put forward a really upsetting, really moving story. He's saying very recently, it was his daughter's funeral. By the way, she passed away from anorexia that was after struggling for two decades with an eating disorder. I don't know exactly whether or not Trevor Phillips relates that to the lockdown, but I think the fact he mentioned that was during lockdown seems that he potentially he does. And Brandon Lewis didn't even recognise that. He didn't say my condolences. He didn't recognise that this incredibly sad story had just been revealed to him and he didn't show any solidarity. He just gave this completely boilerplate answer, which is to say, Oh, I understand why some people are annoyed. I understand why some people are angry. I've also missed funerals. Like it was such an incredibly inappropriate answer from someone who clearly has no emotional intelligence. One more thing to mention about that clip is it ended the boilerplate answer ended with that Matt Hancock has put his family first by resigning and leaving his wife and kids to live with his mistress, which is slightly odd. Ash, I want to know what you make of that interview, but also what it says about Boris Johnson that he was he was ready to defend Matt Hancock. So if Boris Johnson had had his way, this would have just been Dominic Cummings, Barnard Castle, Mark II, Matt Hancock did what any good man would do, which is snog his mistress in his office and then leave his wife and kids. I mean, look, I think you had it bang on when you identified the fundamental lack of empathy and humanity in Brandon Lewis's response. Because when somebody is telling you, I lost my daughter during this pandemic, the response cannot be while I've also lost friends. These two things are not equivalents, a parent burying their child and you not attending the funeral of a friend are just completely different orders of magnitude, just different kinds of grief, you just can't, you just can't do that. The decent way to address that question is go, my condolences, I'm so sorry. That pain that you feel has been echoed across the country. And that's why Matt Hancock staying in place was untenable, right? That's it. That's all that needs to be said because that's what the truth is. I think sometimes the media training of politicians by like, give an answer, give as much detail as possible and it'll make you look authoritative and like, you're not ducking it. It's just actually reeks in some some settings. It's just, you know, disingenuous and slimy and inhumane. And that's how Brandon Lewis comes across there. But moving on to, well, why is it Boris Johnson didn't sack Hancock right away? Because really, it should be a no brainer that if you as a powerful politician are having an affair with somebody who is receiving public money, that you should sack that person. But if you yourself have done that as a politician, like Boris Johnson has, how are you going to sack anybody else for it really should be like, oh, well, what can you say? You can say nothing. So I think that was the first problem, which is how can Boris Johnson sack somebody for doing exactly what he's done in the past? He can't. The second thing is the instinct with this government is no resignations, no sacking unless or until you've done something to upset me or my now wife personally, or if you're a useful guy and a patsy. And I think at this point, Matt Hancock didn't really fit either of those two models. The problem is that the story just looked like it was going to go on and on. So you had the stills and then you had the video with the ass grab, you know, then what you're going to have is, you know, potentially a police investigation. Then after that, people are going to be looking into what are the circumstances of her having been hired in the first place? What kind of access did she have to high level confidential meetings with civil servants or in Downing Street? What kind of say did she have over decisions within the Department of Health and what kind of influence did she have where she or her clients, the clients of the lobbying firm which she is a director, stood to benefit? So it's something which I think was just not going to be contained. It wasn't a case of this is a scandal, it will happen, it will blow up, you sit tight, you weather it, I think it was going to roll on and on and on. And I think once that became clear, it was obvious to Boris Johnson that he couldn't spend the political capital on this. And also perhaps he didn't like Matt Hancock enough to do so, right? We know that he thinks he's fucking useless. So yeah, that's why I think he didn't and why he eventually did. I mean, there was clearly a thing with Dominic Cummings whereby I suppose Dominic Cummings didn't want to go, but also Boris Johnson seemed to think he was completely dependent on him, that he couldn't really function in government without his chief advisor because Boris Johnson doesn't actually like doing any work and it seems he didn't feel the same way about Matt Hancock. What does seem to be clear though is that a cynic in these situations would say, yes, Matt Hancock resigned, but he's only resigned so that he can return to frontline politics in three months time. This isn't really going to be a real consequence for the guy. This is media management and he can come in into an unequally senior role in the near future, even though he's done something which so many people in the public find so offensive, as Trevor Phillips put there. You don't need to be a cynic to think that because actually Boris Johnson has been fairly explicit that that is what is going to happen in this particular circumstance. So in the letter Boris Johnson sent to Matt Hancock accepting his resignation, he included the following. You should leave office very proud of what you have achieved, not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before COVID-19. You should be immensely proud of your service. I am grateful for your support and believe that your contribution to public service is far from over. So that's really strange, isn't it, Ash? I mean, Boris Johnson is explicitly saying, yeah, okay, yeah, you can resign now, fine, go for it. I'll just appoint you in six months time. Well, yeah, that is the, it's not even subtext, is it? It's just text. It's very explicit, yeah. It's just regular, regular text. Yeah, no, I think that that's what's in there. I don't like you enough to take the slings now as now, but yeah, you're an ally. You can come back. That's what I want. And Matt Hancock isn't an astonishingly talented politician, all right? You don't look at him and you go, well, there goes a big beast. He's somebody who has always had, I think, this aura of pathetic thirst around him. That was just the thing which I would think when I saw him on TV. I was like, even before this stuff about Gina Collardangelo came out, you're just like, that man is starving. But I think that, you know, excellence and diligence aren't things that Boris Johnson looks for in a cabinet minister. I think it's personal loyalty and a willingness to take the flag when Boris Johnson doesn't want to sully his own optimistic image. And that's why we'd often see Matt Hancock, you know, breaking the bad news and Boris Johnson going, hey, don't take this one. To lots of tricky press conferences that Matt Hancock was kind of shunted in front of the cameras for. You have to reward that kind of loyalty or lack of dignity, whatever way you want to put it. Those are probably the two key talents of Matt Hancock in the job, wasn't it? I mean, from Boris Johnson's perspective, which was he was willing to take the flag for him, go out in front of the cameras and take whatever criticisms the media were throwing at that point in time and also lie on his behalf. If you're Boris Johnson, it's really handy to have ministers who have no moral qualms or whatsoever about saying things that everyone categorically can see are untrue. Because if that's what you need, Matt Hancock will do it. He is your guy.