British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stood by Matt Hancock, the health minister, last night amid mounting political and public pressure for him to resign after violating social distancing rules during an affair with one of his top aides.
The prime minister said he retains full confidence in Hancock after footage emerged of him kissing Gina Coladangelo, a non-executive director at the Department of Health, in his office.
A YouGov poll found that 49% of voters believed Hancock should resign, while 25% said he should stay, and a government source said he should do the "decent thing" and resign, describing Johnson's decision to stand by him as a "failure of leadership." ".
And in the Ministry of Health yesterday, the mood among officials was gloomy, as employees in the ministry received the news angrily, and a source in the administration said, “I feel like I received a punch in the face, the messages on WhatsApp groups are going crazy, it has been 16 months of hard and completely exhausting work and it was He's in a relationship with a lobbyist who pays him for the work, he should do the right thing and step down."
According to the Telegraph, Hancock refused to resign and stuck to his position on Friday, and Gladnello was appointed as an unpaid consultant to work with Hancock last November.
Hancock said: I accept that I violated the rules of social distancing in these circumstances, I have let people down and I am very sorry, and he continued, saying: I remain focused on working to get the country out of this epidemic, and I will be grateful for the privacy of my family in this personal matter.
The Telegraph says that what makes Hancock's defense more difficult is that he said last year that Professor Neil Ferguson was right to resign from his job as a government adviser after the newspaper revealed that he broke the rules of the closure in order to meet his girlfriend.
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