Fraser Nelson

‘When do we deploy the variant’, asks Matt Hancock after talking of the need to ‘frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain’. The messages yet again remind us of the mindset, at this stage in the pandemic, of the small group of men who had given themselves complete power during lockdown.  The tone of these messages matters. The idea of giving ‘marching orders’ to police, to arrest members of the public for going about normal life, did not seem to make them at all uncomfortable. We see Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, laughing at how they will lock up people who come off flights and saying he wishes he could see the faces of those about to be incarcerated.

Having read thousands of Matt Hancock’s messages, I can see why he doesn’t want this discussions to become public. It’s embarrassingly clear that no one on that WhatsApp thread ever thought they’d be scrutinised by the rest of the cabinet, let alone parliament, let alone the rest of the country. They had all thought the official Covid inquiry would serve as a device of cover-up, kicking this all into the long grass at least until after the general election. Hancock says Isabel Oakeshott abused his trust by taking the material he gave her to ghostwrite his diary and putting it into the public domain. I have no idea what the two of them agreed, but I’m not sure it matters given the balance of public interest.

Kate Forbes’s run for First Minister may be short-lived but it will certainly be interesting. Her challenge: she’s a member to the Free Church of Scotland which opposes gay marriage, abortion and gender self-ID. For seven years as a parliamentarian she has avoided saying what she thinks about such issues and for obvious reasons: it would cause her problems. But today she was asked directly and gave a straight answer: she would have voted against gay marriage and would have ‘struggled’ to back Nicola Sturgeon on gender self-ID. I’m a member of the SNP and I believe that no office should be removed from any candidate on the basis of protected characteristics, including faith.

The parable of Liz Truss is, by now, world famous. A free-market idealogue was elected leader by the radical wing of her party, then trashed the economy by enacting her deficit-financed tax cuts. She invoked Hayek and Thatcher and was cheered on by their admirers. But her mini-Budget terrified the market and she had to quit – after doubling everyone’s mortgage rates. In the end, it was not the experts she was rebelling against, but economic reality. She had applied 1980s economics to the 2020s and it had ended in disaster, for her and for her country. As prime minister, Truss was stunned by the potency of this narrative. Not only the IMF but Joe Biden weighed in to criticise her for reasons she considered demonstrable nonsense.

Why was Nadhim Zahawi fired? Today’s report by Laurie Magnus, the PM’s adviser on ministerial interests, says it’s a question of honesty and disclosure. HMRC started talking to Zahawi about his tax affairs in April 2021 but this became a formal investigation shortly after he became Chancellor on 5 July last year. By this time, he had been knocked out of the Tory leadership race. He had agreed to pay a penalty and the matter was closed. But he’s accused of keeping this hidden and has, it seems, been fired for the secrecy. The Magnus report goes into detail about the offense. A minister facing an HMRC investigation would have been expected 'to inform their permanent secretary and seek advice', it says (paragraph 9) and then 'update their declaration of interests form'.