Matt Hancock for PM? 19 MPs thought so
Politicians don't like admitting they got things wrong, but when it's written in black and white, it would do them no harm to reflect on why they made decisions
I was listening to the Boxing Day edition of Times Radio’s “How to win an election”, the podcast hosted by Matt Chorley and featuring Peter Mandelson, Danny Finkelstein and Polly Mackenzie to discuss political strategy and how parties communicate their messages to the electorate. One of the questions which arose was whether Sir Keir Starmer had been right, both ethically and politically, to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet—he was shadow Brexit secretary from 2016 to 2020—especially given that he had initially been opposition spokesman on immigration under shadow home secretary Andy Burnham. He had resigned from that position in the summer of 2016, writing to Corbyn that it was “simply untenable now to suggest we can offer an effective opposition without a change of leader”.
This made me think about a broader question, that of politicians admitting mistakes. I wrote in October about the strange aspect of British politics whereby to change one’s mind is seen as a sign of weakness or indecision, and it is closely connected, but I am thinking here of something slightly different, perhaps something more retrospective. What happens when politicians have not altered opinions based on new facts, but flatly made errors of judgement and got things wrong? Full and frank confession is rare (a legacy of our anti-Catholic traditions?) to such an extent that when it does happen it is remarkable: famously in September 2012 the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, then deputy prime minister, dealt with the coalition government’s decision to raise tuition fees despite his own commitment not to do so before the 2010 election. In a party political broadcast, he said “We made a pledge, we did not stick to it, and for that I am sorry.”
Clegg made the apology because he believed he had to tackle widespread public disillusionment with his party, and because he wanted to show that he could learn from mistakes. “I will never again make a pledge unless as a party we are absolutely clear about how we can keep it,” he told his audience. It was such an eye-catching and unusual occurrence that it inspired a musical tribute.
It’s easy to understand why admissions of failure are rare. None of us likes being wrong, or being exposed to have exercised poor judgement. It is all the more acute for politicians, who are in essence advertising exactly that judgement and ability to take the right decisions as their major qualification for office. We all at some point think the same thing: if you got that wrong, what else will you get wrong? Moreover, politicians must run at least in part on their record, and to say that some part of it was wrong, was a mistake, is undermining. (An exception, in intent, was Rishi Sunak’s bizarre insistence that it was “time for a change” at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in October, despite 13 years of Conservative government, or 31 years out of the previous 41. It has not been notably successful.)
This unwillingness to admit to getting things wrong is particularly difficult now that social media is building a treasury of previous public statements, even by politicians when they were young. In 2016, Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, was revealed to have shared a Facebook post in 2014, before she was elected to the House of Commons, which showed a map of Israel superimposed on one of the United States with the caption “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict—Relocate Israel into United States”. She stepped down as parliamentary private secretary to the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and said that her views on Israel had moderated; even so, she was suspended from the Labour Party, but reinstated three months later on condition that she apologise, and given a formal warning. This kind of archaeological search for now-problematic statements or opinions is an obvious resource to damage one’s enemies, but I think it is a case of diminishing returns, as the public increasingly understands that people’s views can change over time, as can the context in which things are said.
What about less clear-cut cases? I’m thinking not so much here of stating opinions of which one then becomes ashamed, or which now conflict with one’s professed views. Instead, I have in mind leadership elections, and pledges of support to ultimately unsuccessful candidates. In particular, I was thinking about the Conservative Party’s leadership election in 2019 which was, of course, won by Boris Johnson. There is a whole book to be written about the changing opinions of Johnson by his colleagues, the way some went from being enthusiastic supporters to deadly assassins, and the band of true believers who still yearn for the return of the king over the water.
Let us think further down the ballot, however. For example, one of the great claque of candidates—10 MPs were nominated, three announced leadership bids but then did not pursue them, 18 more MPs publicly expressed an interest in standing, and 17 were mentioned in the media but declined to put themselves forward—was Matt Hancock, the now-disgraced former health secretary who has gone from mildly vexing but irrepressible figure of fun to a much darker, more deluded and solipsistic character who still defends his record and reputation but will be leaving Parliament at the next election in order to “explore new ways to communicate with people of all ages and from all backgrounds”.
Hancock was the fifth MP to announce his candidacy, on 25 May 2019, arguing that “we need to move on from the horrible politics of the last three years” and that “we need a fresh start and a fresh face to ensure this country wins the battles of the 2020s and remains prosperous for many years to come”. Dominic Raab and Andrea Leadsom announced their leadership bids the same day. But he came seventh in the first ballot on 13 June, winning only 20 votes, and decided to withdraw. He told the BBC:
I’ve tried to make the argument about the values that the Conservative Party needs to hold dear, of free enterprise and support for a free society and being open and optimistic and enthusiastic about the future… I’ve decided to withdraw from the race and instead see how best I can advance those values within the party and the big and difficult tasks we’ve got ahead.
His tally of 20 was modest, but the field was so large that it fractured in unpredictable ways. Hancock cannot be criticised too harshly for ambition: the idea of him as prime minister may seem ridiculous, but remember this was a contest in which Sam Gyimah, who by September would be a Liberal Democrat, offered himself (but could not find enough support) and Jacob Rees-Mogg toyed with the idea of running.
Nevertheless, I think we can say that most of the reasons for which Hancock is now ridiculed were, or should have been, apparent to his colleagues in the summer of 2019: his erratic exciteability, his ravening over-confidence, his awkwardness of manner and his sheer lightweightedness. True, some of his worst faults—his selfishness, his willingness to disregard rules and his indignant sense of self-pity—were only fully exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, his resignation and its aftermath, but, even so, I think we can expect some accountability.
I don’t mean this as a witch-hunt or an attempt to name and shame, but nothing here is not in the public domain. Hancock was nominated by Damian Green, Theresa May’s effective deputy for the second half of 2017 before he was forced to resign for various personal and sexual indiscretions; the nomination was seconded by the Chatham and Aylesford MP Tracey Crouch, a pleasant and dedicated football referee who had been minister for sport from 2017 to 2018 but resigned when the government decided to delay legislation on fixed-odds betting terminals. Both identified themselves as moderate, One Nation Conservatives, and Green had voted to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum, while Crouch did not disclose the way she had voted.
Fourteen other MPs openly backed Hancock: Bim Afolami, Andrew Bowie, Alex Chalk, Caroline Dinenage, Jonathan Djanogly, Tobias Ellwood, George Freeman, Stephen Hammond, Margot James, Seema Kennedy, David Lidington, Paul Masterson, Caroline Spelman and Maggie Throup. Five of those are no longer in the House, and of the others, they have had a variety of fates. Alex Chalk is now justice secretary and lord chancellor, Tobias Ellwood went on to chair the House of Commons Defence Committee from 2020 to 2023 and George Freeman was twice minister for science and research. Caroline Dinenage was given a damehood and is chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Did they really think Matt Hancock would be a good, effective and/or popular prime minister? After all, there was no shortage of candidates so they cannot have backed him with a sigh faute de mieux. Nor can it have been a purely cynical, careerist decision, as Hancock was never a front-runner for the leadership. Four went on to endorse Boris Johnson when Hancock withdrew, four backed Rory Stewart, two threw their weight behind Jeremy Hunt and one backed Stewart, then Hunt. One has to assume that those who switched to Johnson did so largely because he was the favourite and they wanted to be on the winning team, while those who went for Stewart may, not unreasonably, have imagined that the Penrith MP might pull off an unexpected victory.
I should say at this point that I don’t hold myself up as a paragon, nor do I pretend I always get things right. Although I was never an enthusiastic partisan, I thought Boris Johnson might be a bearable prime minister, might bring together a team who would give form and execution to his vague, rose-tinted, often contradictory thoughts, and I believed the weight of office might somehow mitigate his worst instincts of duplicity, irrationality, selfishness and snap judgements. I was wrong on every count, and I hold my hands up to that. I think if you want to have any standing in, let along make a living out of, commentating on politics, it’s essential that you own up to misjudgements. As a late teenager, I even thought Bob Dole, the 73-year-old former senator for Kansas, would beat Bill Clinton in the presidential election of 1996 because I thought Clinton was, even at that stage, mired in enough controversy and scandal to outweigh the booming American economy and his obvious superiority to Dole as a political campaigner. As I say, own up to your mistakes.
Leadership elections are difficult because form demands that supporters pretend that their man or woman is absolutely a serious candidate, may even be on the verge of victory, and can already be imagined lightly wearing the heavy burden of office. Some may do so, believing it to be an act, a sham, then find themselves astonished as some of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters did when the veteran left-winger was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Some supporters may have committed themselves for reasons of friendship or some other duty: in 2019, it would have been possible to back Hancock, or, say, Esther McVey or Dominic Raab, knowing it would come to nothing and merely fulfilling an obligation before transferring to a more plausible candidate in the latter stages of the contest.
Some of Hancock’s supporters may have been dedicated, middle-of-the-road Conservatives, One Nation to the core, who perhaps couldn’t support Rory Stewart—in every way more impressive, gifted and capable, but a man who divides opinion—and found Hancock therefore their next best option. I offer that as a lifeline. But then, Hancock had joined Liz Truss’s Free Enterprise Group in 2011, a Thatcherite-inclined ginger group with close links to the Institute of Economic Affairs. He had voted Remain in 2016, but then four other candidates had, while another five had been on the Leave side. In 2018, inexplicably, he became the first MP to launch his own app, Matt Hancock, a kind of social hub, but its data collection led the head of Big Brother Watch to describe is as a “fascinating comedy of errors”.
Alternative history, as regular readers will know, fascinates me and I think it’s a very useful framework for thinking about what did happen, to keep it firmly in mind that it might not, that nothing is inevitable. Trying to imagine a Hancock premiership is a challenge, and I find it hard to believe anyone would have made their way through his victory press conference without cringing to a fatal level. And I don’t think circumstances were so very different in 2019 to make him a plausible leader. Yet sensible, mainstream politicians who had held or would go on to hold senior office in government and in the House of Commons looked at him and, on some level, thought, Yes, that’s the man who will reunite the party and deliver the country to the safe shores of a post-Brexit future.
I’m not proposing that politicians are subjected to some painstaking inquisition on every twist and turn of their CV, every decision they have made, every stance they have supported. But leadership elections are about bestowing huge authority, and in the case of 2019 it was about choosing someone who would become prime minister. Those who supported an implausible candidate like Hancock should at least remember that such a fact is on the record, and perhaps, in these quiet, reflective days between Christmas and New Year, they might take a few minutes to consider why they made that decision, what they think now, and how they would respond if challenged. After all, I don’t think introspection is something there is too much of in contemporary politics. It is, in a way, a version for your critical faculties of the slave who would stand behind the Roman general in triumphal processions, whispering the constant caution, “Remember you are still mortal”.