NHS chief Sir Simon Stevens has failed to confirm he has confidence in Matt Hancock.
Asked repeatedly if, having worked alongside the health secretary during the pandemic, he has confidence in his ability, Sir Simon refused to give Mr Hancock his support.
Pressed on whether the health secretary is hopeless, the NHS boss smirks after an awkward pause and fails to answer.
The PM’s former senior aide published the messages as part of a 7,000-word blogpost which appears to include a series of claims about Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock, including that the prime minister considered removing responsibility for PPE from the health secretary.
In one exchange, which Mr Cummings said was part of late-night messages on 26 March 2020, he and Mr Johnson appear to be discussing actions from “MH” in boosting the UK’s COVID testing capacity.
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The screenshot shows a reply from the prime minister stating: “Totally f****** hopeless”.
At a lobby briefing on Wednesday, Downing Street did not deny the messages were authentic, but assured journalists that the PM has full confidence in the health secretary.
“I am not planning to engage with every allegation put forward, the prime minister has worked very closely with the health secretary throughout and will continue to do so,” the spokesman said.
Asked if there were security concerns about Mr Cummings’s disclosure of messages, the spokesman added: “I don’t plan to get into individual cases, there are rules published for former advisers to observe.”
As he left the Department of Health for the House of Commons on Wednesday, Mr Hancock was asked if he believed himself to be “hopeless”.
“I don’t think so,” he replied.
Pressed again on the matter on Thursday, the health secretary said: “I’m not going to get in to that.”
But when the text messages were put to Sir Simon on Thursday, he could not say that he had full faith in the health secretary.
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‘Are you hopeless Mr Hancock?’
Sir Simon is due to step down as head of NHS England at the end of July after having overseen the COVID vaccination rollout to adults.
The PM has previously praised Sir Simon for leading the NHS with “great distinction” and he is due to become a peer in the House of Lords following his departure.
But there has not always been such an amicable relationship between Sir Simon and Mr Johnson, who attended Oxford University together, with tensions occurring between ministers and top health officials throughout the pandemic.
There were concerns earlier in the year that the NHS would not be able to successfully roll out the vaccination programme.
But those sceptical have since been proven wrong, with Mr Hancock announcing on Thursday that all over 18s will be able to take up the offer of a jab.
Baroness Harding, who is the wife of Tory MP John Penrose, formally entered the running to become the top boss of England’s healthcare system on Thursday.
Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino explained that if the hacking group was telling the truth, they would have asked for a ransom, but he “couldn’t find any request.”
The symbolism of Labour taking the West Midlands mayor, a jewel in the Tory crown, could be felt in the room as Labour activists gathered in Birmingham to celebrate the win with their new mayor Richard Parker and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
There are moments on election journeys when the momentum shifts – and this win felt like one of them.
“We humbly asked [the voters] to put their trust and confidence in a changed Labour Party and they did. And that is a significant piece of political history that we’ve made here today,” said Sir Keir at his victory rally.
“So the message out of these elections, the last now the last stop before we go into that general election, is that the country wants change.
“I hope the prime minister is listening and gives the opportunity to the country to vote as a whole in a general election as soon as possible.”
This win gave them the boost that was missing when they won the Blackpool South by-election on a massive 26-point swing, but then failed to pick up the hundreds of council seats they were chasing.
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This win, on just 1,508 votes or 0.25 per cent of the vote, was a body blow for a Conservative party that believed they could just about cling on. Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, is now the last Tory standing.
For Labour, then a moment to bookmark.
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Just as Boris Johnson’s Hartlepool by-election win in 2021 was a low point for Sir Keir – he told me this week that he considered resigning over the loss because he thought it showed he was the barrier to Labour’s recovery – this too will feel devastating not just for Andy Street but for the PM too.
Labour has beaten him in a street fight. He’s bloodied with Sir Keir now emboldened.
“This was the one result we really needed,” said one senior Labour figure. “It’s been our top focus for the past week and symbolically a very important win.”
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3:32
Analysis of local election and mayoral results
And Labour needed the boost, because, as Professor Michael Thrasher pointed out in his Sky News’ national vote share projection calculated from the local election results, Sir Keir was not picking up the sort of vote share that Tony Blair was winning in the run-up to the 1997 Labour landslide.
His latest calculation of a 35% vote share for Labour and 26% for the Tories, put Sir Keir winning a general election but short of a majority.
What the West Midlands mayoral win did for Sir Keir was to give him a clear narrative that he is coming for the Tories and will do what he needs to take them down.
It raises inevitable questions about what is next for Rishi Sunak. The prime minister had nowhere to go today, not one win to celebrate. The worst performance in council elections in 40 years, was already pretty much as bad as it gets before the loss of Andy Street. The former Conservative mayor was magnanimous towards the prime minister, saying the loss was his alone.
But colleagues will not be so generous. One former cabinet minister said this loss was “devastating”. “We’re done and there’s no appetite to move against him,” said the senior MP. Many Tories tell me they are now resigned to defeat and believe Mr Sunak and his team needed to own it, rather than the rest of the party.
The coming days might be bumpy, the mood will be stony. But Tories tell me not much will actually change for them.
For Sir Keir, he now needs to sell not the changed Labour Party, but his vision for changing the country. The West Mids mayor’s win was dazzling, but it could have so easily gone the other way. And as Mr Sunak fights to survive, Labour still has to fight hard to win.