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