The importance of exposing Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages

For a while now, I’ve been buried deep in a vault in the Daily Telegraph going through the Matt Hancock files. Like the MPs expenses expose, it is a project that was carried out in secrecy and with astonishing thoroughness and resources. Several journalists, including some of the newspaper’s very best, have been working non-stop on this for weeks, going over some 2.3 million words of messages. That’s four times as large as War & Peace.

The hunt isn’t just for the stories, but for context; every published exchange is carefully monitored to make sure nothing is left out. I’d have loved to have run this story in The Spectator but only a newspaper – and one thoroughly committed to the tradition of investigative journalism – had the resources to throw at this historic disclosure of documents. No memoir, diary or inquiry testimony will come close to the depth of detail that Hancock handed over in his WhatsApp messages and the Daily Telegraph is now making open to the world.