Cummings’s messages aren’t a ‘bombshell’ revelation

On days like this, I despair of the media-political village where I’ve spent most of my adult life. Because that village is going to get very, very excited about some things that the Prime Minister said about one of his ministers on WhatsApp – even though it doesn’t really matter.

By now, you know that Boris Johnson wrote ‘totally fucking useless’ in an exchange with Dominic Cummings, and also said things about possibly removing Hancock from his job as health secretary in the early stages of the pandemic.

You know that because several thousand political journalists, tweeters and others have shared it, often with words like ‘bombshell’ and ‘dramatic revelation’. This is, of course, what Dominic Cummings wants and why he’s published details of those exchanges.

But bluntly, so what? How important is it that the PM said something blunt and sweary about his health secretary? Or that he considered moving him from the job?

I’m not really a journalist anymore, but when I was, I used to try to apply a simple test to something that someone thought was ‘news’.