 It's always good fun watching a Tory minister resign. That's until you find out who has replaced them. Yes, Matt Hancock has been replaced by Sajid Javid, a lockdown skeptic and an iron-rand obsessive. We really are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Tonight we are also going to be discussing, obviously, the fallout from Matt Hancock's resignation, including the pressure on Boris Johnson. Why didn't he make the decision himself and the speculation over why there was a CCTV footage of Matt Hancock kissing his aide and how it got leaked, and we have an update on COVID for you. There were 23,000 new cases reported today, so that's a very worrying statistic, although, as we'll be discussing, all is not lost because hospitalisations aren't rising to the same degree. As always, let us know your thoughts by tweeting on the hashtag TiskeySour, and if you're new, hit that subscribe button first story. Who is Sajid Javid and how will he manage the country's health? Well, there are two big issues or issues that fall into two big categories when it comes to the responsibilities that will fall to the new health secretary. The first is obviously the pandemic. How will he manage coronavirus? And the second is everything else. So let's talk about the pandemic first. Now, as we've discussed over the past year and a half, a big divide in Westminster when it comes to COVID-19 is whether or not MPs and politicians are doves or hawks. Now, if you're a dove, what you believe is that health should take priority over the economy. You're willing to bring in restrictions earlier rather than later, and you never wanted to run the economy hot, which essentially means you have a bit of a herd immunity strategy. The hawks are the opposite of the doves clearly. So they're like, let's avoid restrictions. Let's avoid lockdowns at all costs. We should just treat this a bit more like the flu. We should balance out these different interests. Now, I've often critiqued that dichotomy on this show before, but here for now, let's just use this framework because it is one that exists among MPs. Now, on this spectrum, Matt Hancock was a dove. He was someone who was often as health secretary pushing for restrictions to come earlier rather than later against people like Rishi Sunak, against people like Boris Johnson. According to the reports in the newspapers these past two days, Javid is very much a hawk. So Matt Hancock has been replaced by someone who is much less keen on restrictions, or much less willing to impose restrictions than Matt Hancock was. In the eye, Katie Balls, who is well connected in Tory circles, suggested that with Hancock abandoned, Sajid Javid is likely to lead the government on a less cautious pandemic route in that article. She says that on being appointed to the role, Javid said his most immediate priority would be to return to normal as quickly as possible. In previous comments, Javid has sided with the cabinet hawks in the lockdown debate. Last spring, he said the government should run the economy hot and lift restrictions to encourage growth. It follows that senior Tories believe his appointment could tip the inner cabinet balance on COVID decisions in favour of a faster easing and fewer restrictions. That's the take from Katie Balls. Camilla Tominy in The Telegraph spoke to a source who went further than that. So the source told Camilla Tominy, he's a real lockdown skeptic, but he's convinced that in a few years time with the economic costs so high, everyone will be thinking, why the hell did we do that? The tilt in the cabinet has just shifted quite considerably. So this is someone who thinks not only do we want to avoid restrictions now, but we should never have had a lockdown last winter. Now virtually all epidemiologists think this is a terrible argument. It was tried in Sweden where they didn't have a lockdown. What it ended up having was much more deaths than comparable countries and their neighbours and such a bigger hit to the economy. So this is bad science. It's bad policy. Will it though affect? I suppose our COVID response at this point in time. Now everyone really admits we don't want to have lockdowns or will this change in tone have some effect? Let's take a look at his first intervention as health secretary, which was this afternoon in the House of Commons. Now I spent my first day as health secretary just yesterday looking at the data and testing it to the limit. Whilst we decided not to bring forward step four, we see no reason to go beyond the 19th of July. Because in truth, no date we choose comes with zero risk for COVID. We know we cannot simply eliminate it. We have to learn to live with it. We also know that people and businesses need certainty. So we want every step to be irreversible. And make no mistake, Mr Deputy Speaker, the restrictions on our freedoms, they must come to an end. We owe it to the British people who have sacrificed so much to restore their freedoms as quickly as we possibly can and not to wait a moment longer than we need to. I mean, in a way, no one can disagree with that. Why would we want to wait a moment longer than we need to? But there were some elements of that speech, which were, I suppose, quite a sharp breach with how Matt Hancock sometimes spoke about this. So what we'd often hear when Matt Hancock was health secretary was that we were going to work from data, not dates. Sajid Javed has taken the opposite approach, which is to say that dates actually have to be fairly absolute. He was saying businesses need certainty. That means when I say we're going to unlock on the 19th of July, we will unlock on the 19th of July. I say unlock. We will remove all restrictions on the 19th of July and we will not be going backwards. So you can see how those are the words of someone who is more skeptical of restrictions than his predecessor. Now, Ash, I want your take on this specifically on how he will relate to the pandemic or how Sajid Javed's appointment could change government policy when it comes to pandemic control. Because on the one hand, I mean, from my perspective, he's had views and perspectives which have been thoroughly proven wrong over the past year and a half. At the same time, we are now at a position where kind of everyone agrees we want to ultimately be removing as many restrictions as possible. So maybe having him as health secretary a year ago would have been terrible, but right now, when it comes to the pandemic and issues about lockdowns or otherwise, is it almost irrelevant? So this is an interesting one because Sajid Javed when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer was obviously something of a deficit hawk. And when Rishi Sunak eventually replaced him, lots of people, including myself, went, well, it's going to be more of the same, if not, you know, a bit more pro austerity. And then Sunak kind of surprised everyone by being a bit more amenable when it came to borrowing and turning on the spending taps. Obviously, lots of that money was siphoned off in the form of lucrative public sector contracts for private sector interests. But it was one of the ways in which Sunak was something of a surprise. And I think that Sajid Javed, when you sort of compare him to other figures in the cabinet, he's a lot more rigid, a lot less flexible. So I think when he's saying, you know, I am something of, you know, an anti-lockdown voice, I'm going to be hard and absolutist on dates. It's going to be very difficult to get him to shift from that position. Now, it's not quite as disastrous as it would have been to have had a health secretary either earlier in the winter or last spring with that point of view that would have resulted in even more deaths than what we have, you know, tragically had to endure. But that would have been completely catastrophic. Here with the vaccine in play, I think it's merely troubling, right? Because you're not necessarily going to see the same level of disaster as you did when you had the virus just running through society uninterrupted and you also had no means by which to protect people from it apart from lockdown, social distancing and the kinds of restrictions we've been living with for over a year. So worries me, isn't necessarily that we're going to see under Sajid Javid a huge increase in deaths. It's going to be that we see some increase in deaths, a slightly bigger increase in hospitalizations. And while we're still waiting for, you know, many young people to be vaccinated higher rates of long COVID because you've got a health secretary who is so wedded to the very letter of the dates that he refuses to budge on them one bit. And what we've seen, I think, when it comes to the Delta variant is that there is a need to respond very quickly to new and emerging variants to where they happen to be transmitting initially when they've reached this country and someone who's not afraid to say, well, actually, maybe we need some restrictions in these localities. If Sajid Javid's saying, I'm not going to be that guy, well, that is worrying because what that could mean is actually much greater restrictions on all of us and all the things that we like to do much later down the line and people have suffered a lot more in the lead up to that. I mean, I suppose the thing that I found a little bit worrying about it was that I mean, you would like to think that the health secretary, you know, if you think of government sometimes, you know, people bargaining from their different perspectives and then you come to some compromise. So if there is some tradeoff between COVID and the economy, then it kind of makes sense that you've got a chancellor who comes into the room and says, my priority is the economy. Then you've got a health secretary who comes and says, my priority is health. And then they bash it out and come to some sort of compromise. What it seems like at the moment is we're going to have a health secretary going into the room who's like, my priority is business. The chancellor who goes into the room says, my priority is business. And who are the people advocating for our health? That's what I'm slightly worried about here. Even though, as I say, I mean, none of us want to go back into a lockdown. We'll talk in more detail later about what the vaccination drive does mean when it comes to all of these questions. For now, though, I do want to move on from the pandemic and talk about, well, everything else because it's a pretty significant time to become health secretary. There are some big decisions coming up. They include what will the social care reforms be. Boris Johnson has talked about bringing in a new system to replace the completely failing one that we have. There are some issues about how much that will cost. Boris Johnson, apparently, we're told and wants to spend a significant amount of money on that to help implement the Dillnaught reforms, which would have a cap on the amount that you can spend on care. People like Rishi Sunak saying, no way we can afford this. Let's keep doing care on the cheap as we do now. So, Sajajah will have a role there. The other issue is obviously how the NHS rebuilds after the pandemic. It's going to be a real, I suppose, a critical juncture, I suppose you could say with the NHS. They're going to have to rebuild and there is a moment now where you'll have all of the neoliberals say, well, for us to be able to rebuild this, we've got to privatize and sell our stuff, we've got to cut corners so that we can get rid of all of these waiting lists and then you're going to have other people saying if the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that we need to properly invest in our health service. We need to increase the funding of it by a significant degree. I mean, at the moment, I think we spent about 10% on the NHS and very low compared to other countries. I'd be saying, let's put it up to 11, 12, 13%. Is Sajid Javed the kind of guy who'd be making that argument? Let's stick with the first one. So, on care, there are two big arguments here or two popular arguments I've seen today as to what role Sajid Javed would have when it comes to whether or not we will properly fund care when these reforms come about. Probably the dominant argument is Sajid Javed is a fiscal hawk. He'll basically side with Rishi Sunak which is to say, no, we can't afford to have a proper decent social care system. We're going to have to continue doing it on the cheap. The other opposing argument is to say, actually, because he is health secretary, he will end up arguing for a decent social care system and because he was chancellor, he'll be in a position to win that argument. You can decide which of those you find more plausible. First of all, I do want to show you a third possible option. This was from Camilla Tominy. She suggested, or her source in fact, suggested he would just kick the can down the road. So Camilla Tominy quoted a former colleague of Javed who said, while there is no doubt Sajid will look to do a number of far-reaching reforms. I think he's of the opinion we are at completely the wrong stage of the parliament now to suddenly launch the new social care strategy. He thinks the Tories need another election victory. So they've got another four or five year term to do it properly. So we've got there a health secretary whose priority is business instead of health and a health secretary whose priority is Tories winning. Now on to whether or not he'll defend the NHS or what kind of position does he have when it comes to a publicly funded strong NHS. Here again, some serious causes for concern. Chris Smith in the Times writes, Javed made his name as a factorite small state conservative twice a year. He rereads Ayn Rand's pay into the power of the individual against an over mighty state. So this is a real ideological neoliberal someone who's committed back to pairing back the reaches of the state. Now to have someone like that in charge of the NHS not necessarily what we want to see. Another thing we know about Sajid Javed is that last summer he was hired by J.P. Morgan as a senior advisor. So this isn't his career before politics. It's his career whilst being an MP. Now this is potentially worrying because the mirror have described J.P. Morgan as a major player in private health care and Zara Sultana, a labor left MP summarized well precisely why this should be of concern for us all. So she tweeted the new health secretary Sajid Javed earns 150,000 pounds as an advisor to US Bank J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan say they see the opportunities that lie ahead for private health care. The ultimate opportunity for private health care is NHS privatization. The NHS isn't safe with the Tories. Now that quote about seeing opportunities in health care is from the J.P. Morgan website. So they're very clear about this on this issue of Sajid Javed's relationship to the NHS, his broader politics and what that will mean for his relash. How worried do you think we should be? I mean, I was just listening to you describe the fact that you've got a sitting MP, a former chancellor and now a present health secretary who as his little, you know, job on the side for a bit of pin money is advising J.P. Morgan and you've just got to laugh at that point, don't you? You know, Britain has an image of itself of not only being above such, you know, horrible, tawdry things like corruption which only happen in those brown people countries, don't you know? But you know, we're the home of the mother of Parliament's, you know, we invented this constitutionalism game playing fair and by the rules and then you have a look at the rules and they just may as well not fucking exist. They just may as well not exist. It's such a clear conflict of interest to have, you know, a former chancellor being paid by a huge investment bank and also part of that money isn't actually for the advice that he gives. It's also in the hope that he's going to make his way back into power and back into Cabinet at some point and then you've got J.P. Morgan with a direct ear to the heart of government. Turns out you can put a price on power at $150,000 a year. So that was the thing that I was thinking while listening to that. It just reminded me of how disingenuous a lot of the brouhaha around the Lex Greensill scandal was because if people wanted this kind of thing not to happen, the rules would be different and they're drafted this way for a reason. But as for as for how worried we should be about Sadra Javid being Health Secretary, I would say very, I would say very. He is an ideological neo-liberal and thatcher, right? As he said, he rereads Iron and Rand twice a year. I think when you also look at what he's said before in terms of what he thinks an ideal state and should be like how it should be run. He always was that bit more distant even from the kind of, you know, Dominic Cummings vision where you have, you know, high spend, low tax deregulate. He wants, you know, low spend, low tax overall. And that's what he thinks the most efficient and ideal kinds of state is when you look at the kinds of problems this country is facing. The two major ones, of course, climate change and then, you know, elderly care. Those are two things which cannot be fixed without huge amounts of money being poured into them. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, some of the money which is emailed for climate change was absolutely insulting. It was, you know, risible, quite frankly. And I think now as Health Secretary, you're going to see lots of, you know, big trumpeted announcements of, you know, spending and cash which ultimately are tiny drops in the ocean for what it needs that needs to be done to reform our health care service. I wonder what's going to happen though, and this is a kind of side point, is that one of the things that Matt Hancock was working on was a reversal of some aspects of the landslay reforms of the NHS to try and put more powers back in the hands of the Health Secretary. So I wonder if that's something that Sajah Javid will continue with just from a purely, you know, governance perspective, or if he's quite happy seeing the NHS balkanised, unable to coordinate effectively. Though it was those landslay reforms which in part made us so vulnerable to the pandemic in the first place. I mean, I've read a few profiles of Sajah Javid today because obviously, you know, all the newspapers are doing them. And the thing that's actually stood out most to me is none of them mention health. Like the guy doesn't seem to have expressed any opinions about health care or social care before. You know, everything about him is he's interested in finance capital. He's interested in cutting the deficit. He's interested in lowering taxes. I haven't read anywhere where it seems like oh, this is a guy who has a passion for health care. I haven't read that anywhere. And to be honest, I do find that quite worrying. Why not put someone in charge of the NHS who knows what they're talking about? You know, someone who used to work in the NHS, someone who has a passion for this kind of stuff, you've put in there someone who, you know, it just seems like you've just thrown them in a random job because Boris Johnson wanted to bring him back onto the front bench in terms of why he did come back onto the front bench. Let's go to one commentary on his appointment that we couldn't really ignore. It's Dominic Cummings and he tweeted after the announcement. So Carrie appoints Saj. Note, if I hadn't tricked the Prime Minister into firing Sajid, we'd have had a treasury with a useless secretary of state and special advisors, no furlough scheme, total chaos instead of a joint number 10, number 11 team, which was a big success. Sajid equals bog standard equals chasing headlines plus failing equals awful for the NHS need hashtag regime change. He's got this very boomer energy doing a hashtag regime like that's not a hashtag, but anyway. How seriously do you think we should take that commentary from Dominic Cummings? I suppose he's saying the only reason he was appointed was because he's an ally of Carrie Simons, who's obviously an enemy of Dominic Cummings, but also he's saying this guy is just useless. Well, I mean, look, when Dominic Cummings is talking about regime change, what who is he talking about? He's talking about Michael Govan. He's talking about Rishi Sunak. All right. So while he might have some juicy tidbits and of course, he had a lot of juicy tidbits about Matt Hancock when he was at that select committee and all but saying that he demanded 15 times to have the health secretary fired out of a cannon from the top of the Palace of Westminster. While he's able to add color and detail to lots of things that perhaps we already knew about some of the major figures of government. I think that the fundamental aspects of his analysis of, you know, why is Sunak better than Sajid Javid? It's motivated by factionalism and sort of petty empire building. I don't think it's particularly astute or accurate, but something which is important here and this goes back to answering your question, Michael. Well, why has this guy who has never articulated even the slightest bit of interest in health care suddenly found himself as health secretary? You know, while we're still in a pandemic and we're facing these huge existential health crises as a nation. Why not promote somebody who's already a junior minister who's familiar with the pandemic response? Well, it's because if you're Boris Johnson and you've essentially handed over a big scalp to your ex-babes Dominic Cummings, you've then got to signal, but you don't really win. And so that's why you bring someone back who was forced out by your ex-advisor. That's what I think the calculation was and I do think that it was that petty. And so it is all basically point scoring and political management, right? Not any interest in our collective health, but I suppose we wouldn't have expected any more from Boris Johnson. We're going to move on from Saturday Javid for now. I'm sure we will be coming back to him on many a future show. For now, we're going to talk about the fallout from Matt Hancock's resignation. It is still a political event which is having enormous reverberations. 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 defenses 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 on Sunday. 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, explained 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 people across the country, I've lost friends as few years 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 apologized 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 distracting from the wider work that we've all got to do to move forward in the pandemic and out of the pandemic. There's there's no getting away from that. 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. And 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 his daughter was 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 sort of mentioned that was during lockdown seems and that he potentially he does and Brandon Lewis didn't even recognize that. He didn't say my condolences. He didn't recognize that this 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. What the clip did show is what I mean, why Matt Hancock had to go. Imagine if he was imagine if Brad Brandon Lewis like emotional, you know, fool that he seems to be was put out to defend Matt Hancock keeping his job. That would have been a nightmare for the government. One more thing to mention about that clip is it ended with 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 of that interview but also what it says about Boris Johnson that he was he was ready to defend Matt Hancock. So 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. And I think just the 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. But you had that kind of I think sometimes the media training of politicians where 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 is 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. But what can you say? You can say nothing. So I think that was the first problem which is how can Boris Johnson sack somebody D 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 sackings unless or until you've done something to upset me or my now wife personally or if you're a useful fall 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 ask grab you know then what you're going to have is you know potentially a put 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 for 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 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 any work and it seems he didn't feel the same way about Matt Hancock what does seem to be clear though is that you know 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 you know a real consequence for the guy this is media management and he can come in into an an equally senior role in the near future even though he's done something which so many people in the public find find so so offensive like as as as Trevor Phillips put there is 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 I mean Boris Johnson is explicitly saying yep okay yeah you can resign now find go for it I'll just appoint you in 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 what's in there it's I don't like you enough to take the slingers now is now but yeah you're an ally you can come back that's what I want you know and that Hancock isn't isn't an astonishingly talented politician all right I don't you don't look at him and you go you know well there goes a big beast he's somebody who has always had I think this aura of 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 Colla D'Angelo came out you're just like that man is starving but I think that you know excellence and diligence on things that Boris Johnson looks for in the 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 I 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 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 the 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 we are going to go into one more Matt Hancock story again potentially relating to his honesty you can read into it what you want we learned some more details of the weekend about the more personal consequences of the sun splashing a photo of Matt Hancock snogging his aid part of that is that Hancock as well as leaving his job has left his family the Sunday Times report that Hancock told his wife he was leaving her on Thursday evening immediately after he learned his affair was about to be exposed he even woke up their youngest child aged eight to break the news Martha Hancock had had no idea her husband was cheating on her with his university friend and had considered their marriage happy and stable now Matt Hancock left his wife to be with his now former aid who also left her husband over the weekend both parties had free children now sources quoted in the papers all agree that this is now a serious relationship between Matt Hancock and Gina Colla Colladangelo they are saying so a friend is quoted in the mail on Sunday describing them as a quote love match however there are conflicting accounts as to how long they've been together so according to the Sunday times Insiders believe the affair had been going on for months by the time the covert video was recorded on May the 6th that has been contradicted in the mail on Sunday they quoted friends who said they'd only been seeing each other for 6 weeks now the timing here matters not just for the sake of you know it's interesting how long have they been together how long has the affair been going on but it also has some quite serious political ramifications because if they've been together for a long time then it's quite possible that when Matt Hancock appointed Colledangelo to be an executive a non-executive director of the Department of Health they were already in a relationship if they've only been together for 6 weeks then obviously you know that wouldn't be the case they were already closed friends so in any case it probably should have been declared but it's obviously clearly more serious if they are in a romantic relationship and it was not declared it's I mean it's going to be difficult for us here and now to decide which one is true you might think though that if you have left wife and kids in the case of Matt Hancock or left your husband and kids in the case of Colledangelo that would be a surprising thing to do if you've only been together for 6 weeks so it's potentially more plausible that they have been together for a long time which would raise the question of were they in a relationship when she was appointed to this well-paid and very significant role worth also saying that in any case the simple fact fact Matt Hancock has left his wife to set up a life of his former aide as apparently annoyed local conservative so much that insiders believe he could get deselected by West Suffolk members before the next general election that was in the times to be honest I'll believe that when I see it Ash I want your take on this because some people might think are you guys you're dabbling in gossip while you're talking about Matt Hancock leaving his family on many levels though the relationship between Matt Hancock and Colledangelo and you know how serious it was how long it has lasted does have some serious political ramifications doesn't it but yeah it does and the first thing I want to say is that people's personal lives are messy all right none of us would like it if you went digging through decisions we've made and you know late night texts we've sent something embarrassing would be in there all right people are disgusting that's just the way of the world and so this isn't coming from a perspective of saying having an affair alone should disqualify you from high office because I don't think that what I do think is the really critical thing here is did the nature of their relationship mean that there wasn't the correct oversight in hiring her in the first place because she had her parliamentary pass not through Matt Hancock but through Lord Bethel through somebody else there was no record of her appointment back in March and then also you've got this question of what her role was as a non-executive board member at the Department of Health it was to monitor and to scrutinize what was going on in the department and that includes Matt Hancock himself so one that means that at any point them having an affair means that she cannot be trusted to do the job that she has paid with tax payers money to do and two if the affair was going on before she was hired and also before she had her role as an unpaid advisor to the Department of Health well then it means that there was deceit that there was attempts to conceal the true nature of the hiring and why it might have been that Matt Hancock would have wanted her around and also it would have concealed the fact that she cannot do cannot be trusted to do the jobs that she's brought in specifically to do and then you've also got this business of you know charmocracy or as I just like to call it corruption more generally that you can get these lucrative contracts if you've simply got the mobile phone number of Matt Hancock or if you used to like run a pub that he liked to go to Gina Collard Angelo's case it's well maybe he fancied me since university and here I am I'm a director at what's it Luther Penn Dragon is that the lobbying firm who represent amongst their clients British Airways and Accenture both who won contracts with the Department of Health during the pandemic you know it is this again as somebody who's got the right kind of relationship who's in the personal good books of the Health Secretary getting unfettered and improper access in order to essentially squeeze you know a a government department of tax pay and money so it can be funneled away to private interests right and that's why the affair matters it's not just about you know whether or not you consider somebody has an affair beyond the pale it's actually about what is concealed within that whole tawdry cloud in terms of what Luther Penn Dragon do the Guardian in their description say they they specialize in crisis and reputation management so presumably she'll have a lot of of work to do over the next couple of days do you think she's going to invoice them for it? Can you invoice for a problem you've caused? I suppose actually I mean that's I do all the time politics works that's how politics works normally you cause a problem and then you tell the public that you can fix it so interesting she should I mean if she was very good at her job she would have said check your office for CCTV before you cop off with any of your colleagues in the middle of the pandemic can I just say one thing which is I know I've just said that the really important things here are to do with how was she hired where has the money gone where was the oversight but can you just give me just one little gossipy moment for a second because what struck me was that the husband of Gina Collardangelo was helping her put her bags in the car and one of the things that you didn't see I also think that it was really bad for photographers to be outside the family homes but seeing as they was there and I saw I did also come to some opinions that you didn't see you know the clothes being dumped out of the bedroom window which is personally what I would have done if I had just found out that not only had I been cheated on that it was with Matt Hancock the clothes would be going out the window you'd be hearing Kelise core out there being played at ear splitting volume you know I would want the press to know that you know to paraphrase Richard Nixon I am not a Kirk Yeah well it did make I don't know I thought maybe it looked made him look like a gentleman and maybe that's going to make it easier to find his next life but that's I thought maybe he was thinking two steps ahead you know probably a very intelligent this is Oliver bonus man but he's not called Oliver bonus he's called Oliver I don't know who the bonus is we're going to go on to a story about that CCTV camera national security implications before we do that if you are enjoying hit the like button how did an image of Matt Hancock kissing an aid in his own office find its way to the front page of the Sun newspaper now it's a crucial question for a number of reasons evidence of infidelity on the part of politicians conservers Compromat can make them liable to blackmail we might think that if you've got CCTV cameras that are taking pictures of ministers doing all sorts of embarrassing things what could that be used for and who could use it affairs or otherwise Compromat or otherwise we might think that they're being recording devices in ministers office is potentially dangerous because classified information is being discussed what else is being recorded and is is there more sensitive information which is being passed on I mean I would say that they could be leaking sensitive advice about who's getting contracts in the Department of Health but it seems that none of that's that sensitive you can just ask and he'll tell you all on what's up anyway but you can imagine hypothetically if you had a more upstanding government that could be a problem finally it potentially raises questions about the press now the splash this image you can see there was on the front page of the Sun that's of course owned by Rupert Murdoch and the article the investigation itself was written by Harry Cole who is the ex-boyfriend of the Prime Minister's wife right so this is all um these are some real close connections here and you might question whether it's fine that the ex-boyfriend of the Prime Minister's wife and a billionaire newspaper owner seem to have more control over whether or not ministers resign then will essentially anyone else this is someone who oversaw 150,000 deaths he managed to keep his job even though he lied about a bunch of things including testing going into care homes and the number of tests that would be doing that were being done every every day he kept his job then but the thing that made him lose it was a page of the sun now all of this means it is pretty relevant as to what were the sequence of events by which this image found its way onto the front page of the sun and there have been some pretty explosive answers proposed in particular by allies of Matt Hancock now they have suggested to various newspapers that he was a victim of a hit job by number 10 or even a spying operation by reporting that it could be something along these lines is that Matt Hancock had no idea there was CCTV in his office now that meant it was speculated including in the times that the images have been caught by a covert small camera that had been placed in a light fixtures this would be very James Bond esc really if it were the case however at least the question of how the camera found its way to be there seems to be a bit more mundane it doesn't seem like it was the Chinese or the Russians fitting or Boris Johnson himself fitting a tiny CCTV camera into a light and that's because images printed in the mail on Sunday show there was a CCTV camera in Hancock's office in 2017 when he moved in so you can see this image here and you can see they're in the top right there is a a CCTV camera the kind you know it's in that sort of glass half a sphere where it can move around and you can't particularly tell where it's pointing so it seems that Matt Hancock is maybe just not a very observant person there's also a graphic in the mail showing where the camera is and how it would have in fact been well-placed to film the pair kissing at the door so very interesting I mean it's I kind of would have preferred it to have been planted in a light by someone but at least from this mail story it seems plausible that there was a CCTV camera had some details of how it came to pass that footage recorded on that CCTV camera ended up on the front page of a tabloid newspaper and they say so the mail on Sunday say it was recorded by a member of staff at the department who then contacted a prominent lockdown skeptic to try and get the images placed in a newspaper so the mail say we don't know precisely how the sun got it but what we have seen as a series of messages to a prominent lockdown skeptic which shows there was someone an ordinary member of staff in the Department of Health who wanted to get this story out to damage Matt Hancock let's go to some of the reportage in the mail of mail on Sunday so they write in a series of Instagram messages seen by this newspaper the whistleblower says they need to be very careful with the information I'm about to share they add I have some very damning CCTV footage of someone that has been recently classed as effing hopeless now that message on the 17th of June so that was the day after Dominic Cummings released the text messages which showed Boris Johnson had called Hancock hopeless they also go on the mail goes on to say on June the 19th the whistleblower explains more about the footage writing I really need to be careful with this but it involves him in a very compromising position with someone who isn't his wife last month later they reveal I have the full video it's now been deleted off the system as it's over 30 days the whistleblower admits working for the department of health finally the daily mail report having sent a grab image from the video to the anti-lockdown figure the whistleblower discussed a potential payment but said they were not looking for a large amount asked for further material they conclude I really don't feel comfortable sending anymore that I already have at the moment is a very interesting story in the mail I mean I'm assuming what's happened here is that there is a prominent lockdown skeptic who is in contact with this journalist from the the mail on Sunday and he says look you know it wasn't me that leaked this image to the son but I can tell that there was someone who worked in the Department of Health who was trying to find a way to get this placed in a newspaper and I know that because I was one of the people he reached out to the mail on Sunday say they've seen the messages so they can vouch that this did happen and there was someone in the Department of Health who was trying to get out these images presumably because they were contacting a lockdown skeptic because they thought that Matt Hancock had been to pro lockdown to pro restrictions and now the fact that he had broken them would be a way to get rid of him or at least to expose his hypocrisy Asha I want your take on this do you think this story adds up? Do you think that this was just a disgruntled staff member who you know didn't have any particular connection to any of Matt Hancock's rivals but just was upset or annoyed at Matt Hancock for being pro Coronavirus restrictions and so of their own accord decided to leak this footage to national newspapers. I think it's plausible but then again it's also plausible that there is a lot more access quite level access to the CCTV footage in and around ministers offices and it's politically useful to make sure that that's on hand should any of those ministers step out of line. I just think that I want to be careful because I don't want to be out here saying completely wild stuff and you know I've got absolutely no justification for it whatsoever but thinking about how political parties and operations work you don't have a machine which is powered by raging egos and narcissists working simply because of good will one way in which whips work is by you know carrots and sticks carrots of well you know if you play ball you might get this nice little promotion at some point down the line the stick is remember all this shit that you've done and so I think that there must be quite a lot of ways in which to access CCTV footage documentation you know records which mean that you've got a sort of sizable stash of wrongdoing to make sure that you know MPs junior ministers senior ministers all stay in line and how it is they access it I don't know I just don't think that anybody who works at the department of health particularly if there's somebody who's got access to CCTV footage would risk their jobs like that unless they were of a level of seniority which meant that they were kind of comfortable doing so because they would enjoy some kind of protection it is weird the story is really weird because for this argument to work you know you don't just have to work in an office to see how many people get to see CCTV so this is someone who was able to go into the cct room scroll back find the the relevant part and then they think you know potentially filmed it on on on their camera phone now really you have to be in the security team to do that and is a security team going to be the team who knows that Matt Hancock is copping off with one of his AIDS because as you know the way that security cameras work you're not looking at all the cameras at the same time the cameras are essentially there so that if there was an incident you can scroll back and see who it was who who left the room with the computer or whatever it's nearly always retrospective there will be some sort of live monitoring but you'll have one person looking at loads and loads of screens and it'll be flicking between the screens so the idea that a security guard with no personal connection to these politicians would would there be anyone you know just a disgruntled member of staff who would have found access to the CCTV you know this member of staff who does have a personal connection because maybe they're a junior advisor or whatever how would they have got the image of the CCTV and also just something that I want to say very quickly do you think that Matt Hancock is the only one who's up to that kind of business like do you because I obviously cannot put names to any of the stuff because I don't want to get sued I don't have any assets to my name but you know I don't know I don't know lose my trainers or something but but in terms of open secrets in Westminster right these are not people who are known for their discretion or good judgment all right they're often very mediocre personalities who are completely high on their own sense of self-important self-regard the attention power and all of that they make some do stupid things like teenagers because I'm just pure libido right now so I've heard about a senior politician who was overheard by their colleagues having sex in a bathroom you know I've heard of another politician who probably should know better but has sort of secretly moved out from the house they shared with their spouse and has now you know shacked up with somebody you know a bit younger and a bit more attractive despite being still married to the spouse that they were living with these are things which everybody knows and I doubt that any one of these people would be so diligent as to never ever do anything anywhere near an office or a bit of the parliamentary estate where there's CCTV alright there's all sorts of stuff on camera all sorts of stuff on camera so why was this the bit of footage which is made out that's what I think and I just think that you know the idea that I fairly low down security guard he's just really angry about lockdowns and so that's the one thing that he's gonna go for it just doesn't stack up and I mean the weirdest thing because I I take your arguments you know it's it's helpful for you know a whip for example to have some some juice on ministers so they might collect these images or whatever and there will be other people who've been filmed doing this kind of thing but everyone seems to agree that Matt Hancock is the only minister who had a the CCTV camera in his office it was also you know visible to everyone but Matt Hancock didn't notice it and he's been in that office for years like it's really really odd I want to go to a quote from Sajid Javid and this was in the times because he's obviously now moved into that office and there is a camera there which they've now and he's disabled hold that door like he was in there with the anti that's the first thing you did spray being like get that door knob let's go to let's go to his quote so Javid said I haven't disabled the camera that you're talking about but it has been disabled by the department it's just common sense I don't think as a general rule there should be cameras in the secretary of state's office I've never known that in the other five departments that I've run and I'm not really sure why there was one here but I'm sure there will be more to this as the whole incident is investigated so they're saying yeah there was the CCTV camera there since this Matt Hancock video was revealed they've turned it off apparently they've sort of taped it with black masking tape now in case that the you know just a double check that it's off but that Matt Hancock didn't notice it beforehand when it's clearly visible it's just really odd doesn't really stack up Robert Peston actually from ITV did a very interesting tweet today he was expressing surprise at the apparent decision by the government not to investigate the leak if there's anything more suspicious than the the series of events we've seen it's that the government doesn't seem to want to know what actually happened investigate what has happened so Peston tweets it's hard to think of a bigger security breach and the leaking of the Matt Hancock snog film or God Matt Hancock snog film and yet Downing Street is saying that an internal Department of Health Inquiry is all they'll be and there is implication they'll never say what happened even if they find out smells very rum I mean he's right isn't it you know that there's clearly a security breach that the story doesn't quite stack up but no one wants to work out what's happened seems actually that even Matt Hancock doesn't really I mean maybe they got more dirt on him so he'd I suppose he wants to be in Boris Johnson's good books and he's probably a bit like are you got me well-played I don't want to cause any more of a fuss because I don't want to upset Boris Johnson because ultimately he's going to give me another job in six months time Boris Johnson doesn't want you know whatever's happened to be uncovered I mean he's obviously very close to Rupert Murdoch potentially the summer implicated you know that as I say it's very difficult to to work out what has happened here but the fact that the government doesn't want to investigate it is pretty goddamn suspicious I want your final thoughts on this issue actually I mean in a way we're we're being very speculative here because we we don't have the information but it does seem like this is an issue where all of the people actually who have power here don't want a definitive account of what happened to to come out okay so charitable reading would be they don't want to make a big deal over how did the images see the light of day because you know they call him red-handed and it's better for you know the government to just move on right that's the most generous reading of that but but the less generous reading of it is that well why would you want to find out exactly how those images were captured how they were obtained and how they eventually made it out of Whitehall because actually if you're able to capture those images and use them for political assassinations well that might come in handy for you one day so why would you want to close off that tap well it also might be that you think if you if you don't you know agree to cover it up then ultimately there's a video of you that will come out so it's is it that Boris Johnson wants to use similar footage in the future or is it that if you know completely speculative if if this was sort of like a deal between a newspaper editor in a private investigator or whatever this is all highly speculative that you wouldn't want to out them for that in case they had something on you you know it could be that in instead of politicians thinking we can take advantage of this situation it's politicians who are too scared to uncover the actual situation because they're they're they're worried that someone else ultimately has power over them to because I think that there's just all sorts of the around all right because like I said I just don't think that the kinds of people who go into politics are actually by their nature discreet and have got good judgment all right raging narcissists you know that's who occupies SW one but I mean really of all the kinds of erotic romantic sensual places that you want to get it on the Department of Health Building with that carpet I don't know Michael how much snogging have you done in the Navara office not much in the Navara office but I will say that where snogged someone would often just be a matter of convenience so if I was chirpsing someone in the Navara office I'm sure I would have made out with them there well okay well I just want to know this is the one part of the story that I think makes sense but you know that's just kind of don't you find suspicious that he already had it labeled a kiss door yeah it was called the kiss door call it that what are you the camera yeah what do you expect all right we'll come back to this hopefully when there are some more details nine but I think our conclusion is the official story does not quite stack up here we're going to move away from Matt Hancock go to the very important issue of the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic it's it's mixed what's going on in the last 24 hours almost 23,000 COVID cases were reported across the UK now for the exact figure as you can see here there were 22,868 cases reported obviously that's probably a little bit higher than it would be because it's a Monday so you get a bit of catch-up because there is less reporting done on a Sunday but the seven-day average is still very high it's around 17,000 per day and what's probably most significant here is that as you can see the seven-day case rates are a whopping 70% up really really fast rate of increase we're in proper exponential growth area this this doesn't look good and this rate of increase in cases this high I mean this is the kind of thing we haven't seen since January obviously they ended up getting a lot higher than 60,000 many people predicting that if this current rate of rate of increase continues we could be you know getting to numbers implemented that's not going to be implemented now so you're seeing growth at this super super steep rate and we're seeing incredibly high figures on one level it's incredibly worrying right at the same time as I say is a mixed picture because of the vaccine rollout having reached most of the vulnerable hospital admissions they are rising they've doubled since the start of mace that's again sort of a worrying rate of increase as cases but they are nowhere near the levels they were over the winter so the cases they're a third of the of what they were at the peak hospital admissions nowhere near that whatsoever so if you ignore the past couple of months we've had really really low rates of COVID you have to go back to the 9th of September for hospitalization rates to be so low so this is not particularly concerning and this all you know in conjunction raises a very mixed picture a rocketing because of the vaccines the one metric we're used to hearing about to determine whether or not new restrictions will be necessary which is hospitalizations they remain under control so what should the policy response be to rising cases very very difficult to say and in terms of drawing out the tensions at play there was a really really interesting exchange on the Andrew Mark show on Sunday now it was interesting because on the show Andrew Mark revealed that though he is double vaccinated he had recently called COVID and become quite sick he'd in fact missed an episode of his own show the previous weekend because of that he thinks he called it at the G seven in Cornwall now Andrew Mark spoke about this experience to Sir Peter Horby whose chair of nerve tag that's the the group that advises Sage on in particular respiratory viruses so the kind of thing we're we're looking at with COVID 19 and Andrew Mark I mean essentially it was an interesting conversation about experience. I hope it's not self-indulgent Sir Peter to ask you about me because I got coronavirus last week I'd been double jabbed earlier in the spring and felt if not King of the world at least almost entirely immune and yet I got it was I just unlucky were you unlucky I think you you were I mean what we know with the vaccines is that they are actually remarkably effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths they are less effective of preventing infection so you know although you were sick you weren't hospitalized and you know there wasn't any fatality and that's probably because of the vaccination I think it's really important for people to realize that as we increase the vaccination rates and most older people have vaccinated we will see breakthrough infections and we'll start to see that actually in the end majority of infections are in people who've been vaccinated and that does not mean that the vaccines don't work breakthroughs were expected what we want to do is to prevent hospitalizations and deaths and the vaccines do that very effectively sure I'm pretty clear that by being vaccinated I did not end up in hospital and that's a great thing but we use slightly glibly occasionally this phrase mild and moderate infections for me it was really really quite unpleasant and I just wonder if it's important in terms of public health messaging to explain to people you may be double vaccinated but that doesn't mean you won't catch COVID-19 and it won't be pretty bloody I think you're absolutely right you know you you can be pretty sick and not end up in hospital and actually many many of my my colleagues and friends have been in that situation I'm in my fifties and many of my friends of a similar age have had pretty severe illness and have been close to sort of trying to admit themselves to hospital so you can get quite a nasty disease so I mean what was really interesting from a macro perspective he's saying the metric we use as to what's worrying is whether or not hospitals are soon going to be overwhelmed at the same time you have Andrew Mara say yeah I didn't go to hospital was pretty nasty right you know from an individual perspective getting COVID yet not going to hospital is still not a particularly attractive proposition so you've got that you've got the expert saying from a from a macro level if you were a bit ill sorry about that but ultimately it's not the end of the world Andrew Mara saying but it did feel pretty and it's likely that this is going to be a reality for for a while that people will keep getting sick even if they've been double vaccinated that's what's particularly worrying about it now in terms of efficacy against the Delta variant I've shown you these stats before but I do think they are super super important for understanding the position we are currently in when it comes to the effectiveness of these vaccines and what that means for our health and whether or not we're all going to get COVID 19 which is to be honest over the past couple of weeks so let's get this up and there is a difference between Pfizer and AstraZeneca so after one dose of the Pfizer vaccine it is you are 36% less likely to get COVID 19 you are 94% less likely to end up in hospital so super super positive amazingly effective but you are quite likely with you come into contact with it to get COVID 19 I'm in that situation at the moment Pfizer dose to it goes up to 88% so by the time you've had two Pfizer's I'm pretty sure Moderna will be the same because they're the same technology mRNA you do have a significantly reduced chance of catching it only a 12% chance obviously not 12% chance if you are in the situation to to catch it 12% of what it would have been were you not vaccinated that's very high in hospitalization super high 96% on AstraZeneca which I presume is what Andrew Maher has had and what many older people in the country would have had again against symptomatic disease but far more effective against hospitalization but what I think is probably most relevant here when we're thinking about the long term is that even after being fully vaccinated with an AstraZeneca jab you still are only 67% protected against symptomatic disease so there are going to be a lot of people all the way until potentially we have booster shots who are going to be at you know a decent risk of having Andrew Maher's experience which is having fairly debilitating flu for a week or so but then not ending up in hospital and I think that is going to you know really bring about some difficult interesting public policy questions about how to deal with this and I'm really not sure how the public will respond to this at large it could easily be something that's quite divided according to age I want to show you one more clip from that exchange which I think actually complicates the matter even more and that's because they also spoke take a look my early symptoms were simply like a summer cold and I had no idea for a while that I had Covid-19 at all I'm wondering whether the symptoms listed on the NHS website at the moment are out of date well it is being looked at we we monitor there's various systems in the UK to monitoring the symptom clusters that we're seeing in people who are testing positive for Covid-19 and we update the symptom list at the moment you know there is some suggestion that the symptom profile might be slightly different but not any evidence strong enough yet to change the case definitions and the recommendations and so why I think this is this combination presents I suppose some real challenges we're in a situation where even if you're double vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab like Andromar you've got a significant chance of catching Covid-19 at the same time which can be quite unpleasant even if it's not going to end you up in in hospital in nearly all cases at the same time anyone who has the symptoms of a cold could have Covid-19 right and you've got to think about this in terms of what's it going to mean for self-isolation as it has been the case so far if you get a continuous cough if you get a flu you have to self-isolate which is a fairly awkward thing to do if we have to do that every time we get a mild cold and then if you know at the moment we've got 22,000 people testing positive every day that's a lot of people self-isolating it's a lot of people who are self-isolating because they were contacts with someone who was positive and at the same time you're all going to be fairly worried that you're going to give Covid-19 to you know an older relative who's double-vaccinated if you've just got the sniffles and the whole thing I think you know I don't think this is a disaster clearly the vaccines are working we're not having hospitalizations increase dramatically to anything like what we've seen before but this is a hell of a public policy problem okay so leaving aside long Covid for the minute which I do think changes a lot and you will get that data in you know not in three weeks time but three months time six months time right there is a lag for finding out what the impact of vaccines is going to be on that but just taking it on the on terms of symptoms are potentially evolving with the Delta variant so it's much more like the classic symptoms of a cold rather than the loss of smell and taste dry continuous cough and the fever which we all recognized almost straight away is that I think that it it's tricky because vaccines I think encourage a sense of absolutism and people they think I am absolutely protected from this and if someone else has it means they're absolutely protected too and getting people think in terms of relative risk and relative safety right how do you get somebody to understand what it means to be you know 88% protected is like what what does that mean right it's something where you go okay so what what does that mean for my behaviors especially when you've got senior figures and governments saying well by the time we get to this date when we hit this date and it means that you know X many percent of the population have had both their jabs it means we can go full unlocking no social distancing no masks again it discourages people from thinking well hang on there are lots of moving parts here so I think it's conceivable that some of the behavior changes that we have brought in because of coronavirus like people not really shaking hands anymore on public transport or even the idea of just taking your sick pay taking time off because you're unwell we've got one of the lowest sick day rates in Europe in this country and that's not because people don't get six just because people always went to work I think maybe those changes will stay with us and perhaps we'll have to stay with us because you know it's true getting getting a horrible flu might not land you in hospital but it fucking sucks and you don't want that yeah but at the same time we don't want to shut down society so we don't get a horrible flu as you say long COVID and the rates of that when it comes to vaccinations are going to be super crucial so we'll come back to this story for now we are going to end tonight's show Ash it's been an absolute pleasure being joined by you on a Monday night as always now thank you for having me I've got a chicken to get out the oven so that's why I've been miming at Michael like for the last five minutes I'm like that baby needs to be basted I'm sick of hearing about how sick Andrew Mar felt last weekend I'm very glad you're better if you are watching Andrew Mar all right let's end there if you are a supporter of Navara media thank you so much you know you make all of this possible if not please go to NavaraMedia.com forward slash support consider donating the equivalent of one hour's wage a month we really do appreciate it makes all of this possible we'll be back on Wednesday at for now you've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navara media good night