Home Business News Leaked Hancock messages reveal teaching unions are a ‘bunch of absolute arses’ and they ‘really really do just hate work’

Leaked Hancock messages reveal teaching unions are a ‘bunch of absolute arses’ and they ‘really really do just hate work’

by LLB political Reporter
2nd Mar 23 11:44 am

According to the tranche of leaked WhatsApp messages published by the Daily Telegraph Matt Hancock who was in 2020 the Health Secretary and Gavin Williamson was then the Education Secretary had a bitter clash to keep schools open during the pandemic.

Williamson persuaded then the Prime Minister Boris Johnson that schools should reopen at the start of the January term despite major concerns over the second wave which was taking hold of the UK at the time.

Williamson said that they need to fight a “rear guard action” in order to prevent a “policy car crash” then children went back to school and spread Covid even further.

Messages between Hancock and his special adviser Emma Dean said the Health Secretary was “freaking out” and she added, “You can tell he isn’t being wholly rationale. Just by his body language.”

Hancock replied: “I’m having to turn the volume down.”

Hancock said: “I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that we must now fight a rear-guard action.”

The Telegraph said that the messages then showed that he contacted Dan Rosenfield who was Johnson’s chief off staff at the time, to attempt to have schools closed before the January return date and he then sent him is private email address.

On 4 January young children returned to school for just one day and then the Prime Minister closed all schools and said that exams will be cancelled in the national lockdown.

The paper said that Williamson had considered to quit as he was not happy with the decision.

Williamson wrote, “Looking back now, I wonder whether I should have resigned at that point. I certainly thought long and deeply over whether I should have gone then. I just felt so personally upset about it.”

The leaked WhatsApp messages also show how Hancock and Williamson had earlier expressed their frustrations with the teaching unions.

Hancock messaged Williamson congratulating him on a decision to delay A-level exams for a few weeks.

He wrote, “Cracking announcement today. What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are.

Sir Gavin responded, “I know they really really do just hate work.”

Journalist Isabel Oakeshott was given more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages by Hancock when they worked together on his book about hie time in government, she then passed the messages to the Daily Telegraph.

She admitted that she had broken a non-disclosure agreement she had with Hancock, but argued this is overwhelmingly in the “public interest.”

Oakeshott told TalkTV’s Piers Morgan Uncensored, “I received a somewhat menacing message from him at 1.20 in the morning.

“I think he is extremely troubled about how to respond to this, but this is not about him.”

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