Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by

Isabel Hardman and James Forsyfe. And we have just had another Dombaum. This morning, Dominic

Cummings took to substack. This was his free substack, not the one that you have to pay for access

to, to offer a rebuttal of Matt Hancock's evidence recently to MPs and also to share a few messages.

I suppose Isabel, to begin, I think the part of this that has been the most striking relates to

what appeared to be WhatsApp messages between the Prime Minister and Dominic Cummings,

in which among the mix, he says in relation to Matt Hancock or Matt Hancock's work that is totally effing, hopeless.

Tell us a bit more about that.

Yeah, so these are, as you say, message exchanges between Dominic Cummings and the Prime Minister, and there are two.

One is the effing useless message, totally effing useless.

And then there's another message where the Prime Minister also calls Hancock useless again when he's talking to Dominic Cummings about this.

And these are the sort of the most attention grabbing.

And I think probably almost the meatiest bits of this, I think it's 7,500 word blog and a current count 89 tweet thread that's being put up in response to

the select committee's request for evidence to back up some of the things that Dominic

Cummings told them last month. But crucially, there are quite a few things missing. So at the

Select Committee evidence session, Cummings claimed that the Cabinet Secretary had said that he had lost faith in Hancock's ability to tell the truth.

He also claimed that Hancock had said that people were being tested routinely as they were being discharged from hospitals into care homes.

Now, apart from the totally effing useless messages and apart from a reiteration bycomings

that they kept finding out that Hancock was saying one thing and doing something else,

there isn't actually a note or record of those conversations either with the Cabinet Secretary

or with Matt Hancock, which I think makes it quite easy for Matt Hancock to say, well, you know,

it's still telling that no evidence has been produced of this and for the waters at least to have

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