In defence of Matt Hancock
Public outrage over the wrong thing is depressing.
Love your neighbour. Love your enemies. Recognise that you are in no position to feel morally superior. Forgive and do good even where it is not deserved. God is God and you are not God, so leave the judging to Him. These are the core teachings of Christ as I understand them. This is the way we’re supposed to think and live.
But FFS, Matt Hancock makes it hard.
And, in a way, it’s nice to see other people coming round to that way of thinking. But it is maddening (and actually worrying) to see why so many people have started to hate Matt Hancock. The reasons range from voyeuristic moralism to petty bootlicking for the most part, and the light they shine on our society is depressing and alarming if you care about the future of politics and society. So I want to mount a (very limited and in no way wholehearted) defence of Matt ‘my surname is so open to abuse in cases like this it is actually too easy and cheap to mock’ Hancock.
But first. For non-Britons or those who haven’t followed the story: Hands Mattcock [okay, allow me that one cheap shot] was Britain’s Health Secretary until very recently. He resigned after footage surfaced of him making out with an aide. He has also been mired in scandals and dismal performance that many people feel have played a part in Britain’s huge Covid death toll. Here’s a quick(ish) video explaining some of the background – not just to Hancock’s failures, but also Tory underfunding of health services:
But people were outraged by the kiss. And hey, fair enough, I guess. He’s a married man. The aide was a junior contractor (and while I don’t buy the increasingly popular neo-Victorian idea that any relationship with a significant power differential must necessarily be abusive or coercive, that’s also reason to pause). And, of course, he was breaking social distancing rules after pontificating to the country about ‘doing our bit’, even weasel-blaming ordinary people for not ‘safely’ enjoying places he made it possible for them to visit.
It is fine to be angered at that hypocrisy. It is fine to feel bad for his wife (and for the woman who had the misfortune of kissing his pudding face). But these things should not bring out the public ire they have. Particularly when there is so much other stuff that should make us so much angrier.
Social distancing affairs
Social Distancing first: chill out.
Yes, anti-maskers are annoying, yes people who are still (and have always) acted like there isn’t a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people are enraging. But the scapegoating of individual infractions of the rules throughout the pandemic has had way more to do with legalistic glee at being able to judge rule breakers than any real sense of wanting to effectively fight the pandemic. You know how you can tell? People have been way more judgey of their neighbours breaking rules in a small way than they were angry at the vagueness, inconsistency and (in some cases) bizarre illogic of the rules. They have been angrier at beach-goers and the mask-under-the-nose-gang (who make me fume, too) than at a Government that has failed to take appropriate steps at almost every stage.
The affair: also chill out.
Yes cheating on a spouse is awful. Sinful. Wrong. But since when has someone else’s personal sin had anything to do with you? Matt Hancock may be someone you wouldn’t want to date. Fine. But his relationship with his wife is really her business, and she doesn’t really need you to ride in on a white horse to save her.
Ah, but he’s a public servant! You might cry. His moral character is very much our business!
Bullshit.
Unless you are also going to hold politicians up to non-sexual standards of morality (how they spend their money, how they relate to colleagues and staff, what their motivations are, how well they avoid jealousy, envy and pride, how much they give to charity), anyone demanding someone be sacked for adultery is just the pettiest kind of puritan. There is nothing moral, and definitely nothing Christian, in casting the first stone for moral failures. And we can still call this a moral failure – it is a betrayal. But it’s not a betrayal of us. It has nothing to do with us.
Jesus’ command here is that those without sin cast the first stone. And perhaps you’ve never had an affair or a momentary lapse of moral judgement. I have, and I can tell you the consequences are horrible and the reasons underlying it sometimes have very deep psychological roots. And if the statistics are anything to go by, adultery happens more easily (and more often) than you think. Perhaps you are inherently stronger, smarter and better than one in five of your compatriots and have every right to judge and condemn, but to me that sounds like pride. And pride is a sin. It cometh before a fall, I hear.
My point is not: infidelity is chill, yo. More: there but for the grace of God or, at least: this is not my business.
What is my business is how a political servant of the people does his job. And Hancock was abysmal. He was also an utter freakshow, which was amusing for those who disliked his substantive record (for a Cringefest of the highest magnitude, check out this little selection from Vice).
Hancock-ups
While Health Secretary, though, he:
Broke the law in failing to disclose contracts awarded for PPE
Awarded a £100m PPE contract to a company that had, up until that point, only made confectionary
Was accused by fellow Tory, former Downing Street Chief of Staff and boring Bond villain, Dominic Cummings, of not telling the truth about care home residents being tested before being sent home. He has so far not refuted the claim and was, as a result of this and PPE procurement failures, accused (by Piers Morgan), leading to Britain having the worst Covid death toll in Europe
Was responsible for Britain being woefully slow at responding appropriately to the pandemic, has spearheaded profoundly damaging changes to the NHS and outsourcing procurement to a “chaotic mish-mash of private contractors” according to the former Deputy Chair of the British Medical Association.
Was called the least competent Health Secretary since 1978 by that same BMS official
Failed to properly fund the NHS during the pandemic (leading to huge amounts of burnout in NHS staff), choosing instead to hand billions of pounds of contracts to private firms
Hancock has widely been accused of incompetence, and his ideological position has been denounced both by health workers in the NHS as well as those of us who dread British healthcare descending into the horrifying injustice of countries like the USA (and others where quality healthcare is in the hands of for-profit companies). These are the reasons we should have been angry. These are the things that the media should have focused on. Not a video of two people having a snog.
But we didn’t care as much and thus neither did the media. That toxic feedback loop is what worries me most about the whole Hancock-up. That we will continue – in this country and around the world – to encourage and allow the press to focus more on trivialities and what we pretend are character discussions (but are usually cheap gossip) rather than policy and performance. The media should be making the continuing erosion of government-run healthcare the main story. They should be making it clear what it means for people. They should be making it interesting and easy to understand and they should be giving it the airtime it deserves. They are not – and neither are they covering other news to the degree or in the way it needs to be covered. And it’s partly our fault as punters and citizens.
The emergence of this kind of reporting is dramatized very well in the recent film The Front Runner (clip below). You really should watch it. It has that Wolverine / Greatest Showman chap in it.
The most shocking part of the film (Apart from the different history we might have enjoyed had things gone differently) is realising that scandal reporting was not always the norm. That, with the tools at our disposal today for sharing information, we could enjoy thriving and informed democracy, aided by media who don’t just justify their existence and independence by talking about their role holding people to account, but actually doing it in a meaningful way. Holding people account for the things they should be.
I suspect it will be a while before we get there. Recent machinations by the Johnson (another name that is really asking for dick jokes) Government regarding press and media oversight do not give me hope. But then this was the Prime Minister who batted away questions about Hancock and called the matter ‘closed’ like some caricature dictator, only to try to take credit for the Health Secretary’s resignation a few days later. So I shouldn’t be surprised.
Perhaps we should stop voting for idiots. But, then, we base our opinions on what the media choose to highlight. And so it goes on, depressingly.
For now, the least we can do is get off our high horses when it comes to the personal, moral behaviour of politicians (And all public figures) that has little to do with their jobs. Not to go easy on them, but to hold them to higher standards on things that matter to all of us.
For this we will need to curb our own addictions to gossip and scandal. We will also need to develop an ideological spine as the Church – particularly the progressive, leftist, liberal and non-Mammon-worshiping branches of the Church. Because if we don’t know what we stand for, how on earth will we know when our leaders are going against it? And then how will we use our rights, our votes and our place in democratic society to love out neighbours, love our enemies, and proclaim that God really is God?
Matt Hancock should have resigned ages ago, but we could all do a lot better.
Beer Christianity podcast: 50th episode!
Rejoice, good Christian (and those of all faiths and none) men (and women and non-binary persons)! I finally released another episode of the podcast! And it’s a good’un!
Seriously.
Listening back to edit it, I laughed out loud a LOT — and not just at my own jokes. If you’ve never listened to the podcast before, I honestly can’t tell if this is the best or worst place to start, so take a risk and start here. It features the brilliant Harry and Chris (or “HArry and Chris” as the title says — because they are so haha funny and not because I type like a Gibbon on opioids), a look back at previous episodes and a discussion about what the point of the Christian life is. It’s pretty cool.
Please do take a listen on whatever platform you use for this sort of thing, and please share with friends if you like it. Or share it with people you dislike if you dislike it. I’m not proud.
I write other things, too
Telling you this may be a little irritating if you’ve been wondering where the newsletter has been for a month, but I have been writing in other places! Most notably, I recently wrote an article in which I try to make the case for Christian activists breaking the law (and how this is not a bad thing). It’s pretty balanced between left and right wing stuff (partly because the mag asked me to make it more balanced, and partly because you want to reach and convert people, right?), but you know my sympathies are entirely with the lefties.
You can get your copy of Premier Christianity magazine (July 2021) here — and you should. It’s an excellent issue and Malky Currie did a great job illustrating my piece. Which features Stanley Hauerwas, so there’s a reason to read it if not for my writing!
I also can’t honestly remember if I told you but I won a little poetry contest in April with a poem about my gender identity — in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge that month. I liked it!
You can read stuff I wrote ages ago in the Huffington Post UK. That’s probably the least embarrassing stuff :)
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Anyway
Well hello there. You made it to the end of the newsletter. Good on you. Sorry for being AWOL again. As I say in the podcast, I got a bit sad for a bit, but tbh I also took a break. It was needed. I’m hoping to get way back into this (And back on the writing horse for what I optimistically call ‘my novel’ this week. So hopefully I’ll be writing to you soon, again. Until then, here’s some songs I’ve been loving lately.
Loveyoubyeeee!