Isabel Oakeshott Why Did Matt Hancock Trust A Serial Betrayer Of Sources?

When Matt Hancock entrusted more than 100,000 of his personal WhatsApp messages to Isabel Oakeshott, he hoped the political journalist would help him write a book to rehabilitate his reputation as a pro-lockdown health secretary during the coronavirus pandemic.

- Jim Waterson

Instead, Oakeshott leaked the entire archive of messages to the Daily Telegraph, which is planning days of critical stories about Hancock's role in the pandemic.

Setting aside the merits of the news stories being underpinned by the trove of messages, Conservative MPs and political journalists have expressed some astonishment that Hancock entrusted his private correspondence to Oakeshott.

A journalist who has long made clear her disdain for his lockdown policies, she has been accused of having a poor track record when it comes to source protection.

As Robert Colvile, the director of the rightwing Centre for Policy Studies thinktank and co-author of the 2019 Tory manifesto, said: "The main lesson I've learned from this is not to hire someone who absolutely hates your signature policy as your ghostwriter." One political journalist said: "The man needs his head testing to have gone near Oakeshott with a flaming trebuchet, let alone a bargepole." Oakeshott handed Hancock's messages to the Daily Telegraph despite being paid a rumoured six-figure salary by Rupert Murdoch's News UK to be a pundit on its struggling TalkTV channel.

Staff at the Sun and the Times have been left fuming that they are now trying to follow up a story given to a rival newspaper by one of their own employees, while TalkTV has missed out on a scoop that could have helped it in its ratings battle with GB News. Oakeshott told the Guardian she is only employed by TalkTV on a freelance basis and is therefore able to work for other publications.

Oakeshott wrote that she was morally obliged to leak the messages because "a great deal of material that is in the public interest" was left out of Hancock's book, published in December.