Matt Hancock’s strategy is clear – reach for the moon and blame everyone else when it fails

The health secretary sees himself as a kind of Brexit Donnie Brasco. But coronavirus has both increased his cover and deepened his infiltration to the point where few know whose side he’s really on anymore

Matt Hancock gave a statement on the government's ‘moonshot’ testing programme (PRU/AFP via Getty Images)

When most people look at Matt Hancock they see a man serving in a government that is anathema to everything he believes in because his career is more important to him than his values.

I suspect what Matt Hancock sees, on the other hand, is a kind of Brexit Donnie Brasco. A good guy, doing right, keeping the bad guys in check.

Trouble is, the unforeseen coronavirus plotline has both increased his cover and deepened his infiltration, to the point where, one suspects, even close family members don’t know whose side he’s really on anymore.

He can play the bait and switch blame games as well as anyone, as was evidenced, yet again, through another coronavirus update to the House of Commons, this time to discuss Operation Moonshot.

The strategy is clear now, and arguably even effective. The plan for dealing with coronavirus is to set out a clear plan that makes complete sense. A huge testing regime, backed up by a world beating test and trace system, and a data driven, highly responsive structure for containing localised outbreaks.

And when anyone, especially the Labour Party, has the temerity to point out that none of it actually works, they can be blamed for not being supportive enough, for flip flopping, for saying one thing one week, another the next.

It is a strategy that is only partly undermined by the unfortunate reality that at the same time as pursuing it, they have accidentally allowed themselves to become a byword for incompetence and dishonesty. Whatever benefit of doubt was once available, has rather been spaffed up the wall on such unfortunate incidents as the Barnard Castle driving eyesight test, and the A-level results fiasco for which everybody resigned apart from the man responsible.

At one point, while Hancock was leaning over the despatch box, congratulating himself on the success of his mass testing programme that now involves Londoners having to drive to drive-in testing centres in Inverness, he really did say the words, “the Labour Party needs to get with the programme”.

He did not immediately make clear which programme it is they must get with. Is it the non-existent contact tracing app? Is it the test and trace programme that is currently somewhere between 62 and 69 per cent effective, when it must be 80 to be viable? (Mr Hancock has described the 60 per cent claim as “simply untrue”. The fact checking service, Full Fact, described it as “accurate”. One takes one’s choice).

Or is it Operation Moonshot, the £100bn, 10 million tests a day by Christmas scheme, built with technology that doesn’t yet exist, and bears no relation to anything suggested by any other country as a viable way ahead?

It was talk of Operation Moonshot, specifically, that prompted laughter from the opposition benches, and for Hancock to announce his intention to “depart from my script”.

“I’ve heard the naysayers before,” he said. “I’ve heard them say we’ll never get testing going. They opposed the 100,000 tests and did we deliver that? Yes we did.”

It doesn’t matter anymore that they didn’t oppose it. Nor does it matter that it is well known that Hancock was only able to breathlessly announce the success of his 100,000 tests a day target, by putting tens of thousands of tests in the post the day before.

The point is that the Hancock transformation is now complete. He’s one of them now and the naysayers and the doomsters and the gloomsters just better get used to it.

If you’re one of those people still stuck behind in the world of truth and reality, well, Matt Hancock just isn’t on your side anymore. If he ever was.