‘Midazolam Matt’ Hancock Was ‘Elated’ When Covid Jabs Were Rolled Out

Former UK health secretary Matt Hancock claims he was ridiculed in Westminster for believing in the vaccine and recounts crying on live TV the day the first doses were administered.

In his diaries, Hancock, also knows as “Midazolam Matt“, said that during the months prior to the first ‘vaccine’being approved, he faced opposition from ‘sceptics’, including some inside No10.

On December 1 the UK became the first country in the Western world to authorise the Pfizer and BioNTech jab.

The Mail Online reports: Hancock describes the scenes of ‘elation’ as he announced the news in the Cabinet room – recalling that Boris Johnson ‘danced a jig’ – and his embarrassment as he ‘blubbed’ on television when the first Briton was inoculated on ‘V-day’.

Gina Coladangelo, his communications adviser who later became his lover, said: ‘At least you showed how you felt.’

He also reveals how he feared the rollout would have to be cancelled because three early recipients had serious reactions and his relief when it turned out they could continue after all.

In the diaries, Mr Hancock tells a series of stories about his focus on the vaccine as the route out of the pandemic, mentioning the vaccine more than once-a-page. He even claims he told health leaders in January 2020: ‘I want it by Christmas.’

But one of the most extraordinary claims in the latest extract of his pandemic diaries is the strength of opposition to his ‘optimism’ over the vaccine.

Mr Hancock refers to a ‘briefing against me from No10’ in a newspaper article which quoted a Whitehall source saying that ‘Matt Hancock is the only person here who thinks there is actually going to be a vaccine… it’s a running joke with other departments’.

The report was published less than two months before the vaccine was approved. Mr Hancock says he was happy to ‘own’ the joke.

Two days previously he had also been told to delete sections of his speech that suggested vaccines ‘are the way out’. ‘I will not be blown off the vaccine drive by the sceptics – in No10 or anywhere else,’ he says.

It was only a few weeks later, in November, he was presenting the plan for the vaccine rollout to the prime minister.

‘I’ve rarely seen him as enthusiastic. Finally I think he realises this really is going to happen,’ Mr Hancock’s diary reads, recalling that Mr Johnson banged the table and boomed: ‘Can we go faster?’

Mr Hancock adds: ‘As expected, the price of success is that No10 has gone from not believing the vaccine will happen to getting completely carried away.’

In December the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency formally authorised the vaccine, allowing the former health secretary to announce the news the nation had dreamt of.

He writes: ‘I walked into the Cabinet Room where the PM was standing behind his chair with Rishi, [Cabinet Secretary] Simon Case and a few others dotted around: ‘We have a vaccine! It’s been formally approved!’

‘Boris danced a little jig, his jubilant moves giving every impression that he hadn’t had much dance practice of late. We were all elated.

We were all elated.

‘We know this is the only way out. So many people feared it would never happen. But here it is, the first in the world, in under a year.

‘On the way out of Downing Street I bumped into Rishi, who gave me a man-hug and thanked me for pulling off the vaccine.’