by K.H.
In recent months, talk of the pandemic has waned, perhaps for the best. Personally, I imagine few of us would like to return to the discourses which dominated that period. The innovative vaccine rollout was thankfully successful in stopping massive, uncontrolled spread of Covid-19. many incompetent politicians who were bafflingly in government during the pandemic period have now been churned through the party machine and banished to the backbenches, and possibly even to electoral oblivion. At the start of March however, The Sunday Telegraph’s Isabel Oakeshott pulled off the most major confidentiality breach in recent lobby journalism history, bringing the pandemic and all its political sins back to the fore.
Oakeshott had been given exclusive access to a downloaded copy of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages – by Matt himself – for a book on government policy and strategy during the pandemic. She then – along with her colleagues – proceeded to leak the messages in the Sunday Telegraph citing a ‘public interest’ justification that sidestepped regular journalistic ethical norms.
Unsurprisingly, this has drawn criticism from some fellow reporters; an unspoken tenet of lobby journalism in the UK is to ensure confidentiality of political sources when it is requested, at the promise of future information. This helps journalists piece together the bigger picture – even if they cannot reveal it all at once – while politicians are able to gain political advantage by disclosing often sensitive and politically-damaging information in confidence. Such sensitive information can direct journalists towards writing articles that prove potentially explosive in future when more information is available ‘on the record’. Take, for example, the Partygate story last year, which was actually a collaboration between many UK journalists sharing confidential information.
In this respect, Oakeshott has indeed undermined trust in journalists among politicians. However, given how many attacks by Tory MPs on journalists there have been in recent months, it perhaps changes little. Think, for example, Tory MPs such as Jonathan Gullis who recently went on the attack against Gary Lineker in the press, accusing him of being unable to present football on the BBC in an unbiased way because he disagreed with government refugee policies. … Alternatively, recall Kemi Badenoch (now Secretary of State for Business and Trade) furiously tweeting about journalist Nadine White of HuffPost UK and The Independent being ‘creepy and bizarre’ because she asked the then-minister for equalities questions by email.
Regardless of her norm breaches, Oakeshott is fundamentally right in thinking that the public has a deep, embedded interest in the publication of these messages. Many of the statements, arguments, and jokes contained within the currently-released extracts are inflammatory, depicting a government in which politicians sincerely discussed pedantic and trivial details of pandemic law to the detriment of much more serious issues. In all likelihood, we have been presented with only a partial picture of the messages – one which is likely more negative than if we had seen all messages – but the contents of the releases so far should trouble us.
Among the messages include:
As young people, and particularly as students living in London, it is undoubtedly frustrating to us that choices which led to our isolation in tiny rooms 23 hours a day, unable to get a proper academic or social experience at university, were treated with such nonchalant regard. What is perhaps even more frustrating is that policies which were clearly exacerbating infection rates and potentially extending lockdown, such as Eat Out to Help Out, were routinely publicly dismissed as having any effect on virus cases, while privately it was apparently as obvious to Hancock and the treasury as it was to the public. Decisions that had impacts for millions were imposed without proper consideration, in favour of preserving the playtime of the powerful while the general population endured the brunt of the pandemic both health-wise and socially.
While all politicians, and indeed people, can be guilty of duplicitous behaviour, the examples revealed by Matt Hancock’s pandemic WhatsApps remain particularly egregious and concern the running of a now embarrassing national government. Perhaps one of the problems was that the pandemic was not treated as a governmental issue, but one of a group of ‘friends’ running the country. The messages fundamentally demonstrate the incessant in-grouping and embedded elitism of the Conservative government, leaving the rest of us without a real voice or representation. The unacceptable behaviours exhibited in these messages contradict the UK’s civil service code and the ministerial code. Moving on from the childish self-regard of the last 13 years is just another of the next UK government’s missions.
