Hi

Interesting this morning.

A complete stonewall by Hancock, Boris etc.

Hancock refused to say that he had lied about the return of Covid positive patients to care homes.

Hi

Interesting this morning.

A complete stonewall by Hancock, Boris etc.

Hancock refused to say that he had lied about the return of Covid positive patients to care homes.

The PM flew into a rage after returning from his own Covid battle to find elderly residents had been released from hospital still infected.

He yelled at the Health Secretary: “What a f***ing mess.” *

The angry exchange was revealed after former No10 adviser Dominic Cummings claimed the disastrous handling of the pandemic had cost tens of thousands of lives.

A source said last night three ministers called for Mr Hancock to go. But the PM is said to have replied: “It would be intolerable to sack my health secretary in the middle of a pandemic.”

Mr Johnson learned of the testing blunder after his stay in an intensive care unit with the virus. He discovered Mr Hancock had sent thousands back to care homes even though they could spread it.

It was made worse as homes were struggling with PPE shortages.

Bizarrely, the PM is unlikely to fire the Health Secretary now for fear of being seen to bow to pressure from Mr Cummings.

According to the Opinium study, the prime minister's approval rating now stands at -6% - compared with +6% two weeks ago.

The poll now puts the Conservatives on 42%, down two points since the last poll. Meanwhile, Labour is on 36% after gaining five points.

Only one in five of those polled said they trusted Dominic Cummings to tell the truth - however, the research suggests that many of the claims he made during seven hours of testimony to MPs were believed.

While 66% of respondents said they believed the former senior adviser's claim that the government pursued a herd immunity strategy at the start of the pandemic, 20% said they believed this was false.

Separately, 60% said they believed the allegation that Mr Johnson thought coronavirus was a "scare story" and called it "the new swine flu", with 24% saying that was false.

When it comes to Matt Hancock, 44% think that the health secretary should resign, compared with 30% who think he should stay.

Boris Johnson's approval rating has slumped after Dominic Cummings' accusations, opinion poll suggests

https://news.sky.com/story/boris-joh...gests-12320467



A bad day for BJ and Soapy .....

Dominic Cummings, who has been engaged in a weeks-long feud with Downing Street, published a lengthy blogpost that he claimed showed details of how "Number10/Hancock have repeatedly lied about the failures last year".

Amid his more than 7,000 words, Mr Cummings also included a series of screenshots from what he said were his WhatsApp exchanges while working in Downing Street during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

In one exchange, which Mr Cummings said was part of late-night messages on 26 March 2020, he and Mr Johnson are shown to be discussing actions from "MH" in boosting the UK's COVID testing capacity.

The screenshot shows a reply from the prime minister stating: "Totally f****** hopeless".

Mr Cummings added, shortly after receiving that message from the prime minister, he had a series of missed calls from Mr Johnson who was calling to say he'd tested positive for coronavirus.

Hi

Cummings blasted the Government.

On Wednesday, Mr Cummings - who was forced out of Downing Street after an internal power struggle - released a series of WhatsApp exchanges between himself and his former boss, dated to early last year.

In one of them, Mr Johnson purportedly called Mr Hancock "Totally [expletive] hopeless".

In another, he appeared to say his procurement of personal protective equipment had been a "disaster" and that he wanted to hand some of Mr Hancock's duties to Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove.

Downing Street did not deny the authenticity of the messages, but insisted the prime minister had full confidence in the health secretary.

In the House of Commons on Thursday, Labour's Thangam Debbonaire asked:

But Mr Rees-Mogg praised the plan agreed at last weekend's G7 summit in Cornwall to distribute one billion Covid vaccines to poorer nations, lauding Mr Hancock's role in arranging the UK's contribution "so successfully".

He called his cabinet colleague "the brilliant, the one and only successful genius who has been running health over the last 15 months" *, adding that "he has done so much to make not only the country but the world safer".