Is WhatsApp making work life more nasty and brutish? – The Irish Times

In idle moments of delusion, I have sometimes wondered if I have what it takes to be a politician. Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages prove without doubt I do not.Leaked messages that Hancock wrote as UK health secretary during the pandemic have appeared almost every day this month in London’s Daily Telegraph. They are riveting. I seize on each new batch in the way I imagine Charles Dickens fans rushed to read new instalments of The Pickwick Papers. As a result, I have been reminded of the weapons-grade levels of self-promotion and basic bastardry that pervade the upper reaches of political life.“I must own this,” Hancock told an adviser early in the pandemic, as the pair plotted to ensure he took maximum credit for a vaccine roll-out that other ministers were helping to develop.“It MUST NOT be Alok!” Hancock fretted some time later, having learnt that news was about to break of a vaccine breakthrough that could have left him overshadowed by the then business secretary, Alok Sharma. “I know, I’m worried,” replied his adviser.Hancock also passed on the happy news that the Covid crisis could propel his career “into the next league”. And he discussed the idea of threatening to
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