Will Hancock resign?

‘Speechless,’ was Matt Hancock’s reaction when told about Professor Neil Ferguson’s lockdown breaching liaisons on 6 May last year. The Health Secretary added that he thought Ferguson was right to resign from Sage — and that it was a matter for the police whether or not to prosecute the professor. 

It is perhaps just as well that Hancock didn’t come up with any more quotable remarks as they would now certainly be quoted back at him following the publication of photographs of him embracing aide Gina Coladangelo — apparently on 6 May this year. It raises two questions: does 6 May have any significance in the pagan calendar as a date for our leaders to engage in fertility rituals? And, perhaps more seriously, given that this was two weeks before the rest of us were allowed to hug people outside our own household, will Hancock now be following Ferguson’s example and resigning?

But hang on a minute: did Ferguson really resign from Sage and if he did how permanent was his resignation? The latest list of participants in Sage, which was updated on 18 June, includes one Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London.