The shabby dishonesty of Matt Hancock’s ‘diaries’

‘Standing in my kitchen in Suffolk after a quiet New Year’s Eve, I scanned my newspaper for clues as to what might be lurking around the corner.’ 

So run the opening words of yesterday’s first extract of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid. 1 January. New Year’s Day. And our hero – modest, unassuming, but eternally vigilant, eyes always scanning the horizon – is on duty, even when most of us are nursing a foggy head.  

Of course, we know now what this man of destiny didn’t know then: that the ‘news-in-brief story about a mystery pneumonia outbreak in China’ that catches his eye is the harbinger of the vast global story that is to change all of our lives. Yet here he was, if we’re to believe this, that very day: noticing the tiny news item that turned out to be a message from his bleak and momentous future.