Hancock’s ‘humiliated’ wife, the scarlet woman, and the tabloid trope that never dies…

I can’t remember the last time I woke up to a proper, front page scandal. Yet there it was on Friday morning: the evidence that would, finally, herald the end of Matt Hancock’s time in the cabinet.

It was a tabloid dream of a story, so it was always going to run and run. But as the days have passed, I’ve felt increasingly uncomfortable with the extent to which a story that should revolve around the former health secretary – he was the one having an affair in his place of work during a national crisis, after all – has morphed into an obsession with the women on either side. It is a depressing reminder of how easily we default to pitting women against each other.