Tory ex-minister Matthew Hancock MP, photo Policy Exchange (Creative Commons)

Tory ex-minister Matthew Hancock MP, photo Policy Exchange (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

As soon as the prime minister announces his ‘full confidence’ in a government minister in a pickle, you know they’re doomed.

And so it came to pass that the now former ‘totally f…..g hopeless’ health secretary, Matt Hancock, had to fall on his sword.

Of course, this is of little comfort to those thousands of families whose vulnerable relatives died unnecessarily from Covid-19 because Hancock discharged elderly patients from the NHS into the privately run care sector without testing them first.

And it doesn’t exonerate Hancock and Johnson for dishing out lucrative PPE and other Covid-related public contracts to Tory party chums.

And who is going to replace TFH Hancock? None other than Mr Austerity himself, the ex-chancellor Sajid Javid.

But if the PM thinks this game of musical chairs will draw a line under this farrago then he should think again. The drubbing of the Tories in the former Tory stronghold of Chesham and Amersham shows that voters don’t take kindly to being dumped on by a rotten government.

Johnson’s only saving grace is that HM opposition – Labour’s Keir Starmer – is also TFH!