‘Britain gets ‘Hancocked’ every week’: Dominic Cummings slams Matt Hancock in latest blog

“Britain gets ‘Hancocked’ every week”, Dominic Cummings has quipped.

In his latest blog post, dumped mercilessly on the day in which Hancock faced accusations that he had an affair with a government aide while social distancing measures were in place, Cummings furthered his assault upon the Health Secretary while continuing to recast himself as the hero of the pandemic, a rose amongst among incompetent thorns.

Cummings quips: “Our political institutions systematically exclude such people, systematically promote Hancocks, and systematically block learning from high performance, which is seen as a dangerous menace by normal bureaucracies.

“Thus we get Hancocked.”

Using a quote from War and Peace, he said: “As Tolstoy put it wonderfully in War and Peace, ‘we get Macked’. The cynical diplomat, Bilibin, is explaining the latest disaster against Napoleon, a tragicomic story in which the Austrians accidentally gave away the Tabor bridge to the French because of a general, systemic dysfunction in General Mack’s army.

“Britain gets ‘Hancocked’ every week”.

In the blog, Cummings presented alleged emails and texts he sent to people in senior positions in government. He said he had been critical of the government’s test and trace plans and that Boris Johnson had agreed with his assessment.

An alleged email from Johnson read: “Totally agree. The whole track and trace thing feels like whistling in the dark. Legions of imaginary Clouseaus [reffering to Inspector Clouseau] and no plan to hire them.

“Apps that don’t yet work. And above all no idea how to get new cases down to a manageable level or how long it will take, by which time UK may have secured double distinction of being the European country w[ith] the most fatalities and the biggest economic hit.”

Cummings said that, by May, he thought that “government negligence was killing the most vulnerable people” and that Johnson agreed but refused to fire him.

He added that testing was an “incredible mess” and said:

“Hancock had failed terribly. The Cabinet Office did not have the people it needed to solve the problem. Many were screaming at me that Hancock was failing to act on care homes and spinning nonsense to the Cabinet table while thousands were dying in care homes.”

Hancock has apologised for breaking social distancing guidelines and said he has “let people down” after images emerged of him kissing close aide Gina Coladangelo, who was appointed in his office at the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).