London | In the end, it wasn’t the snogging with an aide that led Britain’s most prominent pandemic official to resign. It was, his many critics claimed, the audacious hypocrisy: the sense that ordinary people must follow the rules of mask wearing and social distancing, even if the elite get to make out in government offices.

Matt Hancock announced his resignation as health secretary on Saturday (Sunday AEST) after the tabloid The Sun splashed a photograph and video of the 42-year-old passionately kissing a former Oxford University friend inside the ministry’s headquarters in May, when Britons were still being implored to keep socially 1.5 metres apart.

Washington Post