Matt Hancock admits to 'weak leadership' in pandemic during SAS: Who Dares Wins

Evening Standard

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00:00 - Why are you here?

00:01 - Because I want to push myself, basically.

00:04 I've been through something really big.

00:06 Didn't end the way I'd wanted it to.

00:08 - What was that?

00:10 - Well, I handled the pandemic, didn't I?

00:12 - No, you tell me.

00:14 - Yeah, well, I did.

00:15 It was the biggest experience of my life.

00:18 It'd be very hard to see a bigger professional experience

00:23 than being the health secretary in a pandemic.

00:25 I pushed myself in the past,

00:26 but I want to test the limits.

00:30 See how deep I can dig.

00:31 - How do you feel about how it all ended then

00:34 with regard to the pandemic?

00:36 - I was managing a very difficult situation

00:39 in a professional sense.

00:41 Thought I'd done a pretty good job.

00:43 And then-

00:45 - Well, then it (beep) fell apart.

00:47 - I fell in love with somebody who I'd known

00:53 since I was at university

00:54 and worked closely with in the pandemic.

00:57 And I had to resign from government.

01:00 - Let's put this in Yemen terms, number one.

01:02 Basically, the rules that you've established

01:05 as a country to follow,

01:08 you think, "You know what?

01:10 I'm above this.

01:11 I'm bigger than the system."

01:13 - Yeah, I didn't think that.

01:14 - I'm talking.

01:16 (beep)

01:17 Listen here.

01:18 You think, "(beep) this.

01:20 I'm gonna have a bit of that.

01:22 I'm gonna break the rules here.

01:24 I'm gonna break the rules there."

01:26 On a number of occasions.

01:28 From sitting on this side of the table,

01:29 that's exactly how it went down.

01:31 - Well, I, well-

01:32 - From the background.

01:34 - Yeah.

01:35 - Where you come from.

01:36 The very foundations is honesty and integrity.

01:39 So put the barriers down.

01:41 - Yeah.

01:42 - And explain it properly.

01:43 Yeah?

01:44 - Well, the truth is,

01:45 I was very careful not to break any of the laws.

01:51 But what I didn't think was that there was still guidance.

01:55 Wasn't legally binding by that point.

01:56 But it was still the guidance that we were putting out.

02:01 - The point being is,

02:02 is guidance is stuff that you wrote.

02:04 Like, when we-

02:05 - Yeah, that is-

02:06 - Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.

02:07 - Yeah.

02:08 - When we dish out a set of orders,

02:09 we (beep) live our life by that as well.

02:11 - Yes.

02:13 - With integrity.

02:13 As far as I'm concerned,

02:16 you showed weak leadership,

02:17 allowing things to get in the way of a position

02:20 that you were entrusted to hold.

02:22 - Yeah.

02:24 I regret the lack of leadership at the end.

02:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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