Matt Hancock’s turn at the 5pm press conference hot lectern today, and the big news is the tiny CARE badge has been swapped back for the larger, rainbow-coloured NHS one.
What a pity it has come to this. The very small badge with the word CARE written on it in very small letters is easy to mock, and that is absolutely no reason not to do it.
Of course, many care workers have been very grateful to receive their little badge. Many more will be just as grateful to receive it once the initial shortage problems have been resolved. Few, one suspects, will be as grateful as they will be for the various life-critical gowns and masks, which are, alas, still being “ramped up”.
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Indeed, so long have they spent being “ramped up” that it may very well be that they never ramp down again, but will just carry on rising up the Ramp to Nowhere, the Hancock Ramp becoming the Penrose Stairs for the twenty-first century.
Are we permitted to wonder whether proudly sporting the word “CARE” in letters so small as to be barely readable might prompt the brain of the casual observer to make some kind of mental leap between the microscopically small size of the word and the amount the person who’s wearing it does actually “CARE”?
There’s also the small matter about it being introduced to allow carers to claim various perks from supermarkets and other retailers that NHS workers get. And so Matt Hancock wearing it, while not himself a carer, sadly makes him, at best, the coronavirus John Terry or, at worst, committing the modern-day equivalent of the Victorian crime of imitating a Chelsea pensioner, which was once punishable by death.
But the greatest misfortune is the sad fact that Matt Hancock actually does care. Among the senior members of the current government, Matt Hancock is the only one who, if you were his best friend and he drove past your house and noticed it was on fire, would actually bother to call you and let you know.
The big announcement today is that now, “key workers” are able to book online for free coronavirus tests. There is some uncertainty about how many key workers there are in the UK. The figure may be as high as 10 million. It certainly includes journalists covering the coronavirus crisis, which means it may even include me, whose job is little more than to sit at home taking the mickey out of Matt Hancock.
On Thursday evening, Matt Hancock merely looked knackered, which is an improvement on two days ago when he looked like he might burst into tears at any point.
For some reason, all of the government’s many failures – on PPE, on ventilators, on testing – all seem to be conspiring to land simultaneously in Matt Hancock’s lap.
If there is to be a coronavirus fall guy, he is currently the leading candidate. One suspects he is about to learn that politics is a vicious world. Good guys regularly finish last. Getting on with finding a solution to a problem is absolutely no alternative for finding someone else to take the blame.
