The Hancock Lockdown Files: A Rare Glimpse Into the Moral and Political Rot at the Top of the UK Government

When former UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock handed over a veritable treasure trove of personal WhatsApp correspondence – over 100,000 messages in all – to a journalist whom he had commissioned to co-author his Pandemic Diaries, it appears it did not cross his mind that she might go rogue on him and release his confidential correspondence into the public domain.

Whatever we might think of Isabel Oakeshott’s decision to break Hancock’s trust - here is her version of events, where she makes the case that the public deserves to know how their government messed up - this information will hopefully give us critical insights into the mindset of top civil servants and political leaders tasked with managing the pandemic response in Britain.

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I have only seen a tiny fraction of these 100,000 WhatsApp messages, namely those published on the Lockdown Files page of The Telegraph. Based on what I have seen, things are not looking good for Mr Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries memoire. But more importantly, Isabel Oakeshott’s whistleblower revelations confirm the worst fears of lockdown critics, namely that government ministers and public health officials were not acting in good faith, but just propping up their own careers and trying to keep the population under the spell of fear and dread.

What the Lockdown Files reveal is not a government trying, in good faith, to do what is right for the people, or trying to carefully balance the good and bad consequences of their actions, or trying to make sure their interventions track the best available science, but rather, a government scrambling to save face, stay on the right side of public opinion, score PR points, and avoid political rows and divisions that could play out badly in the press.

The cavalier, manipulative, and reckless attitude toward the lives and well-being of others is colourfully illustrated by a flurry of WhatsApp exchanges between government ministers and senior civil servants that were almost certainly not intended for public consumption. Numerous of these exchanges have been in the public domain for days, and to the best of my knowledge, their content has not been substantively repudiated either by Hancock or any other of the public figures involved. Furthermore, The Telegraph has very much staked its reputation on their authenticity. So it seems very likely to me that they are authentic.

Here’s an executive summary. The full content of the messages I have drawn upon is documented at the end of this article.

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• We see Hancock talking about “deploying” a new variant, as though variants were just a tool to manipulate public sentiment.

• We see the Cabinet Secretary joking with Hancock about important people being put in “shoebox” accommodation because of Mandatory Hotel Quarantine policies.

• We see Hancock very single-mindedly pursuing his testing targets and apparently subordinating the welfare of vulnerable nursing homes to his desire to meet his wider testing targets.

• We see Prime Minister Johnson worry about whether lifting lockdown measures will be well received by public opinion (he could have worried instead about whether lockdown measures violated civil rights, or destroyed human well-being).

• And we see senior members of government discuss school masking policies from a purely political and strategic perspective (e.g. in terms of their “visible impact” and in terms of avoiding squabbles with Scotland and WHO), with little regard to their scientific validity.

All of these exchanges reveal a willingness to subject people to scientifically baseless and uncomfortable mask requirements based on purely political considerations; contempt for individuals subjected to Mandatory Hotel Quarantines; a near-obsession with staying below a certain “R number,” in near complete disregard of any other aspect of social reality; and a conception of testing as reaching testing “targets,” at almost any cost, with no visible concern for the potential collateral harms of lockdown interventions.

No doubt there is plenty more incriminating evidence in the Lockdown Files. If these sorts of exchanges were happening at the highest levels of the UK government, it is likely that similar exchanges were happening in other nations (we already know, for example, that the US government colluded with social media companies to censor their critics). It’s just that it’s not every day that a newspaper gets privileged access to over 100,000 confidential text messages from the Secretary of State for Health. It’s unlikely that a national Covid inquiry would get access to this level of unredacted confidential communications.

The question is, can we extrapolate from Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp correspondence to the motivations of other governments? Unfortunately, not a whole lot. But this particular data dump should at least make a major dent in the pro-lockdown narrative as it reveals how callous, inhumane, scientifically uninterested, and shamelessly self-serving some of the leading decision-makers were in one of the nations that ended up with the dubious honour of helping to pave the way for prolonged lockdowns across the world.

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(1) “We frighten the pants of(f) everyone with the new strain”

1. 13^th December 2020:

Department of Health Media Special Adviser Damon Poole: Rather than doing too much forward signalling, we can roll pitch with the new strain.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock: We frighten the pants of(f) everyone with the new strain but the complication with that Brexit is taking the top line

Damon Poole: Yep that’s what will get proper behaviour change.

Matt Hancock: When do we deploy the new variant?

(2) Jokes about Mandatory Hotel Quarantine “shoe boxes”

5^th February 2021:

Health Secretary Matt Hancock: We are giving big families all the suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms

Simon Case (cabinet secretary): I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a premier inn shoe box.

16^th February 2021:

Simon Case: Any idea how many people we locked up in hotels yesterday?

Matt Hancock: None. But 149 chose to enter the country and are now in Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will.

Simon Case: Hilarious.

(3) “I want to hit my (testing) target!”

24^th April 2020:

Civil servant: Asymptomatic testing sub is reading. Top recommendation is: That you agree to: Prioritise testing of asymptomatic staff and residents in care homes where an outbreak has been recorded within the past 14 days. We estimate this will result in 60,000 tests being carried out across 2000 care homes in the next 10 days.

Matt Hancock: This is ok so long as it does not get in the way of actually fulfilling the capacity in testing.

28^th April 2020:

Matt Hancock: I need to call in a favour tmrw. I currently have 22,000 spare slots tomorrow at my drive thrus. Hence I’ve extended eligibility today. Demand just isn’t there. This is obvs good news about spread of virus. But hard for my target. So I really could do with a testing splash. Can we make this happen?

George Osborne (Editor of the Evening Standard): Yes – of course – all you need to do tomorrow is give some exclusive words to the Standard and I’ll tell the team to splash it. You’re almost there. Send the words to me by 8am tomorrow.

(4) “The whole package will be too far ahead of public opinion”

6^th June 2020:

Boris Johnson (Prime Minister): How are we doing? How are the numbers? Seem very hard to squeeze. Am thinking hard about the 15 June. At the moment we could do non-essential retail, some more for families, a bit of outdoor hospitality and announce that we can’t do all primary schools by July. But Slackie and Lee [media advisers to Boris Johnson] still think the whole package will be too far ahead of public opinion.

Matt Hancock (Health Secretary): Deaths yday (Friday) only 204. New cases 1505. So same story: coming down but slowly. R very close to one – hence the slow decline. So I think Slackie and Lee have a point…with R just below 1, if we go ahead with non essential retail on 15 June, then we are sailing very close to the wind. My view is the public are right and we need to hold our nerve.

(5) Masking: “Effectively free and has a very visible impact” (10^th January 2021)

10^th January 2021

Simon Case (Cabinet Secretary) (writing to Matt Hancock): More mask-wearing might be the only thing to consider. Effectively free and has a very visible impact? Wear masks in all settings and outside home and in more workplaces? Am not sure that got us much further, did it? Basically, we need to get compliance up.

25^th August 2020:

Boris Johnson: Folks I am about to (be) asked about masks in schools. Before we perform another u turn can I have a view on whether they are necessary.

Matt Hancock: Here is the medical advice: I understand the concern for secondary schools is because teenagers are hanging around in school corridors and hallways. Therefore, the easier answer than responding with face coverings is to say our guidance references one way corridors, ventilation, etc. and to note that brief encounters as children switch lessons is usually a low risk (i.e. move your kinds on instead of introducing face mask requirements).

Lee Cain (PM’s director of communications): Considering Scotland has just confirmed it will I find it hard to believe we will hold the line. At a minimum I would give yourself flex and not commit to ruling it out. Also why do we want to have a fight on not having masks in certain school settings?

Simon Case (Cabinet Secretary): I agree with Lee. Gavin [Education Secretary] is in same place […] Unless Chris [Chief Medical Officer]/Patrick [Chief Scientific Officer] etc are willing to go out and say WHO and Scots are wrong, I think some nervous parents will freak out about this happening in Scotland, but not in England.