The revelations have come thick and fast. There was the joke implying the health secretary believed Rishi Sunak’s “eat out to help out” scheme may have driven up Covid cases. There was the most senior civil servant describing the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, as a “nationally distrusted figure”. There was the reference to teaching unions as “absolute arses”. The leaked phone messages from Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp account have certainly had their share of surprises.
Yet a week after they were published in the Daily Telegraph after being provided by the political journalist Isabel Oakeshott, have they really helped our understanding of the government’s decision-making during the pandemic? Or is this just more political gossip?
The Guardian political correspondent Aubrey Allegretti tells Hannah Moore how Oakeshott got hold of the messages, and why Hancock called the leak a “massive betrayal”. He analyses what it tells us about the culture of the government at the time and the choices they made, and explains why there may be more information to come.
Photograph: PA Video/PA
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