Boris Johnson called Health Secretary, Matt Hancock hopeless in WhatsApp message

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr Boris Johnson has branded the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Mr Matt Hancock hopeless over the handling of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Dominic Cummings, a former Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister published expletive-laden messages apparently from Boris Johnson, in which the PM brands the health secretary “hopeless”

It is the latest salvo in a bitter war of words between Mr Cummings and Mr Hancock over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The PM’s former aide accuses Mr Hancock of trying to rewrite history at a select committee session last week.

And he claims Mr Hancock and the PM had “repeatedly lied about failures”.

Mr Hancock denied lying to the prime minister about the testing of hospital patients discharged to care homes at the start of the pandemic in a four hour rebuttal of Mr Cummings’s testimony to the same committee.

Mr Cummings has now hit back with a 7,000 word blog post, in which he says Mr Hancock’s version of events is “fiction”.

It includes screenshots of WhatsApp messages, which appear to show an exchange between Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings on 27 March last year.

Mr Cummings highlights the ramping up of testing capacity in the US and criticises Mr Hancock for saying he was “sceptical” about meeting a target.

Mr Johnson purportedly responds: “Totally [expletive] hopeless.”

In another message, on 27 April last year, the prime minister appears to call the situation around personal protective equipment (PPE) “a disaster” and alludes to diverting some responsibilities to Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove.

“I can’t think of anything except taking Hancock off and putting Gove on,” Mr Johnson apparently adds.

Source: BBC