Matt Hancock is injecting hope into our veins – and sweet blessed relief into his

At the despatch box of the House of Commons, Mr Hancock has rarely looked happier – but much credit can he really take for the arrival of a vaccine?

Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s plan to await a vaccine has come off – and entirely thanks to somebody else  (Reuters TV)

It’s important to stress that these are early days. We must be patient, we must continue to follow the rules, but as things stand, there is a very good chance that Matt Hancock has been right all along.

At the despatch box of the House of Commons, where the health secretary has now been standing, without a break, for at least eight months and possibly more, Mr Hancock has rarely, if ever, looked happier.

The big vaccine news may save thousands of lives, but more importantly, it’ll save Matt Hancock’s blushes for at least a few more months. “We are injecting hope in to the arms of millions,” he said. Ah, the politician’s "we."

Almost all politicians are afflicted by a certain amount of sociopathic narcissism. People who run the country tend to imagine that good things happening in the country must somehow be down to them. Mr Hancock is especially fascinated by the world of tech. He likes nothing more than to share on social media extraordinary videos of, for example, young children being fitted with innovative ear implants and hearing their mother’s voice for the first time, as if he is in some way owed thanks for it.

But more to the point, the big breakthrough really did allow Mr Hancock to say the following: “The plan is to suppress the virus while we await a vaccine, and we can see that plan is working.”

I mean, it’s partly true. Certainly the plan is to await a vaccine, and entirely thanks to somebody else, that part looks like it might come off. But if the plan had been to “suppress the virus” in the meantime, well, to that we can only say, “next slide please.”

What will be Mr Hancock’s job, however, is to distribute this new vaccine, should it work. We would hear about how it must be stored and transported at minus 70 degrees. Mr Hancock assured us he’s been on top of that for ages. Having spent most of 2019 stockpiling fridges in anticipation of a no deal Brexit, we imagine he just had to put a couple of calls in to the same supplier. For all your refrigeration needs, be it for medicines, vaccines, or merely somewhere to hide from the TV cameras, Hancock is your man.

It would be mean spirited, at this happy hour, to ask some of the less pressing questions. Like, for example, just how did this huge German pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, win the vaccine race while all the while held back by the EU’s innovation destroying Clinical Trials Directive?

There’s also the fact that, back in early 2016, when Dominic Cummings gave evidence to the Treasury Select Committee, he would explain at great and entirely wrong length, how the EU was preventing the UK from developing new cancer drugs, and that we would soon be launching ourselves into a brave new world of science and innovation, which only makes it all the more mystifying how, the stifled old Germans beat us to it.

Still, they did it somehow. And all in good time for Hancock and co to take the credit. Inject the hope into my veins. And the sweet blessed relief into theirs.