British Health Minister Matt Hancock resigns. There was a storm around the minister after photos of him kissing an adviser were published.
Hancock is married, and surveillance images of him kissing a ministry employee have caused a stir. The image was splashed across the front page of The Sun on Friday.
The photo was taken on May 6, more than a week before social distancing rules for people from different households were lifted.
Hancock has been the UK government’s leading figure in the fight against the pandemic and the vaccine campaign, making carelessness in dealing with infections a central issue.
– The government owes a debt of gratitude to the people who have sacrificed so much during the pandemic, frankly when we have let them down, as I have done by breaking the rules, Hancock wrote in his letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Excuse me
He apologized for breaking the rules and also apologized to his family and those closest to him.
– The last thing I want is for my personal life to distract from the focus on getting us out of this crisis, said the former health minister.
Johnson said he regretted the resignation, and he said Hancock was proud of the effort. The Prime Minister first backed Hancock after he admitted breaking social distancing rules.
At the same time, Hancock has had to contend with strict infection control regulations on behalf of the government, including restrictions on how many people can attend funerals. This and other reports of rule breaking have led to accusations of hypocrisy from Britain’s opposition parties.
The images in The Sun are said to be provided by the whistleblower and appear to be from a surveillance camera.
Question
Labor also demanded answers from the government to questions about the adviser’s appointment. The fact that former lobbyist Gina Coladangelo has become a close associate of the minister should not have gone unnoticed.
Coladangelo was also married, and he and Hancock were said to have first met at university.
Hancock was also at the center of another sensational case earlier this month, when former government adviser Dominic Cummings shared a message that appeared to refer to the health secretary in a derogatory term. The sender is said to be Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The message must have been sent via the WhatsApp service and, according to Cummings, came from a thread in which he and Johnson last spring discussed the Health Secretary’s work to increase testing capacity early in the pandemic.
In an apparent response from Johnson, Hancock’s efforts were described as “completely useless”, he wrote Sky News.
Javid’s new Health Minister
Following Hancock’s departure, former finance minister Sajid Javid has been confirmed as Britain’s new health secretary, Johnson’s office said according to BBC.
Javid surprisingly resigned as finance minister in February 2020. After his departure, British media cited the spat between Javid and Dominic Cummings as part of the explanation. However, since then, the influential and free-spirited adviser has left his post and is now involved in an open dispute with Boris Johnson.
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