From Profumo to Hancock: A history of Britain’s political sex scandals

Sean O’Grady takes a look at where the health secretary’s ‘steamy clinch’ ranks in the long list of intimate improprieties

Matt Hancock with adviser Gina Coladangelo outside BBC (PA)

Matt Hancock’s been playing around – so what? As Thomas Macualay famously remarked long, long ago: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality.”

Indeed so. There’s a great deal to be said for the modern attitude of tolerance towards the private lives of politicians.

However, the health secretary’s relationship with Gina Coladangelo has raised questions about possible conflicts of interest, breaches of the Covid rules and use of taxpayers’ money – giving the press due licence to chase the story, and Hancock, down.