Ding, ding, ding! It’s day two of the revelations from the Telegraph’s lockdown files and today’s chosen battlefield is the school playground. The paper splashes on claims that Matt Hancock as Health Secretary fought a ‘rearguard action’ to shut down the nation’s schools against the efforts of Sir Gavin Williamson, who held the Education brief from 2019 to 2021. Exchanges reveal the lengths which Hancock went to fight such battles, privately suggesting it was ‘mad’ that Sir Gavin was trying to re-open them in January 2021. After Johnson initially backed Williamson, his cabinet rival sneered that ‘the next u-turn is born’, adding:
I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that we must now fight a rearguard action.
He then immediately contacted Boris Johnson’s chief of staff and began privately lobbying to have schools closed before children returned. As the planned reopening loomed over the following week, Hancock and his team crowed that Sir Gavin was having to eat ‘humble pie’. So much for cabinet collective responsibility eh?
Amid a raft other revelations, the Telegraph also says that ministers believed there was ‘no robust rationale’ for including children under 12 in the rule of six but, er, continued with the policy regardless and that masks were introduced in English schools in spite of Sir Chris Whitty warning there ‘were no very strong reasons’ to do so. Why? So as to not risk a political row with Nicola Sturgeon. Well done chaps.
Perhaps understandably peeved by having his private messages leaked – including one in which he suggested that teachers were looking for an ‘excuse’ not to work during Covid – Sir Gavin has written a piece for the newspaper. In it he reveals he considered quitting as Education Secretary over the decision to close schools, writing:
Looking back now, I wonder whether I should have resigned at that point. I certainly thought long and deeply over whether I should have gone then. I just felt so personally upset about it.
One can only imagine Team Hancock’s reaction on WhatsApp if he had…
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