Another day, another painful set of WhatsApp messages about Matt Hancock. Yet again the Daily Telegraph have released another batch of texts involving the former health secretary, this time about his burgeoning public profile in the wake of the pandemic.

The paper reports that as Covid arrived on Britain’s shores, Hancock shared with his special advisor a memo written by a ‘wise friend’, that suggested that Hancock’s career could be propelled ‘into the next league’ by the Covid pandemic.

Hancock certainly comes across as image conscious in the texts. The Telegraph suggests that over the course of the pandemic, he exchanged more than 22,000 messages with his staff about social media posts. In a single day he sent 72 messages about his social media, as social care minister Helen Whately struggled to pin him down about PPE in care homes.

The WhatsApps also lift a lid on the former health minister’s vaccine strategy, with Hancock’s special advisor suggesting that it made political sense to be in favour of lockdown but pushing for vaccines, adding that:

‘It won’t take any work – we don’t have to do anything, industry is all geared up for this. We just need to turn up to the parade, salute and cut the ribbon. It’s purely a comms/political thing. Bizarrely, pushing on vaccines will be the least resource intensive thing we do, but the most politically beneficial.’         

The messages also reveal that as Hancock began his affair with Gina Coladangelo, the health secretary began asking staff to discuss the release of messages with her, in particular a snap of the health secretary surfing.

Hancock must be delighted that yet another tranche of messages are still to come…