Matt Hancock’s diaries present his defence to the Covid inquiry

The former health secretary has set out his side of the Covid story, writes John Rentoul

A couple of early entries in Matt Hancock’s ‘Pandemic Diaries’ reveal the one-way mirror between politicians and the rest of us (AFP via Getty)

A couple of early entries in Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries reveal the one-way mirror between politicians and the rest of us. As open as society now is, and as intrusive as journalists now are, those in power still know things that the rest of us don’t.

At the end of January 2020, Hancock recorded that he had stood by the speaker’s chair for Prime Minister’s Questions and thought it “surreal” that there was not a single question about the new virus in China. The virus occupied his every waking thought, and the day before he had been told by Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, that the reasonable worst-case scenario was 820,000 excess deaths in the UK. He wrote that he had thought: “Every question you lot are asking will be rendered completely irrelevant in a few weeks.”

Two weeks later, on 11 February, he wrote: “Driving home down the Harrow Road, I looked at the crowds ­spilling out of the pub on the ­corner and tried to imagine what it will be like if we have to shut these places. I felt like I inhabited another world, that no one outside had yet seen into.”