The health secretary was joined by the Covid briefing B team to tell us little we didn’t already know
Where’s Priti Patel? Unintentionally busy, presumably. As are Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Alok Sharma and others. There was a time back in the spring when we had a rolling cast of ministers to compere the Downing Street press conferences. Now it seems that almost all of the cabinet have learned to make themselves unavailable. Things to do, people not to see. Well, it is lockdown.
So inevitably it was Matt Hancock who was yet again delegated to do the front-of-house gig at No 10. The health secretary has long since resigned himself to doing all the jobs that no one else will. That’s why he’s the Door Matt; the ideal fall guy for a press conference at which the government has almost nothing much to say. And what he did have to say didn’t really stand up to much scrutiny.
