MPs pile in to celebrate his appointment, and you can see their point, he’s definitely preferable to Hancock
The rumour was that Matt Hancock’s departure became inevitable when the rest of the frontbench refused to go out and support him. Even so, it felt a bit iffy that, of a few words mangled by Sajid Javid, in his first performance as the new health secretary, the first was the prefix “honourable” to the MP for West Suffolk. Dude, nobody’s asking you to go out and bat for the man. You just have to get the letters in the right order.
It was a performance with a difference from Javid, the difference being that he basically said “yes” to everything. Where it wasn’t a yes, it was a hard confirm. He was the TSB of health secretaries, the man who says yes not because you’re his brother-in-law but because he likes to. It will unfold over time what this pile-up of yessing actually means – will he give NHS staff a pay rise? Yes, it will certainly be a “fair” settlement – but before he greeted thirty brisk questions in the affirmative (a pass for Richard Burgon’s, but we’ll come to that), there was the business of his speech.
