There's a surprise. All hands to the pump when the holes on the starboard side of the ship start to sink it!

Why on earth do you think I feel a "victim"? Let me reassure you I don't. My concern is not in any way about me. It's about opinions being posted as facts. It's about the circulation of misinformation. It's about exposing the tactics employed to try to avoid accepting these things have been exposed.

It has nothing to do with holding different opinions on the media response to the early days of the pandemic. People who hold your type of attitude are always going to be suspicious of the media and see devious motivations in play. People like me will disagree and suggest that caution and support for the official position is both to be expected and is wise.

I think that's probably taking some exchanges out of context, and we need to see the whole to understand the specific.

It's a hatchet job on an easy target, which shines little light, reinforces prejudicial attitudes, and comes from a source with an agenda. No brownie points for anyone from me.

I have little time for Hancock. I have an ongoing dispute with the DHSC over statements that he and Johnson made in 2019, which has cost me £10,000 and which I am fighting with the help of my MP.

However, I think this event just shows that Ministers are human and when under pressure don't always think straight or behave well. Why then is it a surprise that supposedly private messages between colleagues are less than diplomatic and display human frailties? It's natural.

What is truly beneath contempt is the behaviour of the journalist involved, Isabel Oakeshott. Given sight of private correspondence to assist in writing a book that helps explain some of the events during the government's response to a pandemic, and signing a confidentiality agreement, she has decided, without consultation or permission, that releasing them is "in the public interest". Whilst knowing that an objective, comprehensive, enquiry is to be held that will ignore tittle-tattle and concentrate on facts.

That the release is of interest to the public doesn't mean it's in the public interest. Who in public life will ever trust a journalist again with background information if this is what happens? It's not in the public interest. It's designed to sell newspapers and advance the career of a journalist. She has, to my mind, gone much too far and made a bad miscalculation which could yet see her, and the Telegraph, in Court.

Andrew Lawrence on some of this.

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Hancock again.

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