In the past few minutes Matt Hancock has announced his resignation as health secretary after a torrid few days in which he was revealed to have broken Covid restrictions.
Resigning now means that Hancock can come back to government in future
Hancock writes in his resignation letter to Johnson that he does not want his private life to distract from the handling of the pandemic, while Johnson says he is ‘very sorry’ to receive the letter.
This is an unsurprising change from Friday, when Downing Street said Johnson had accepted Hancock’s apology and ‘considers the matter closed’. It was very clear at the time that the matter wasn’t closed at all: neither No. 10 nor Hancock would say anything other than that he had broken ‘guidance’ on social distancing when it wasn’t clear whether he had gone further and broken the law.
Hancock could probably have tried to stay on. But what would have happened would be that it would be harder and harder for him to reimpose restrictions in the autumn when there is another surge of cases.
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