POLL: Does anybody care about all these Tory leadership hopefuls and their druggie pasts?
Andrea Leadsom: She’s the fourth Tory leadership candidate to admit having smoked “weed”.
Can somebody please tell me how having taken drugs in the past makes someone a better candidate to be the leader of the Conservative Party – let alone prime minister?
Jeremy Hunt was the first; he admitted taking a cannabis lassi (it’s a kind of drink made in India).
Then Rory Stewart said he took opium at a wedding in Iran, prompting speculation in some quarters that he was pre-empting a revelation – possibly by a rival.
And then the floodgates opened.
Boris Johnson took cocaine and cannabis at college. Can anybody say they’re surprised?
Dominic Raab has had cannabis, and so has Andrea Leadsom.
And Michael Gove took cocaine. In his confession, he went on at length about the drug’s harmful effects (“drugs damage lives”) and about his feelings on the subject now (“it is something I deeply regret”). This caused more rancour than the straight confessions of the others.
Green MP Caroline Lucas said it was “rank hypocrisy” to admit to “mistakes” while “backing policies that perpetuate harm”.
Crispin Blunt, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform, said: “Michael has delivered a politically-crafted and deeply unconvincing hand-wringing statement of regret for committing a victimless crime. He should have used the opportunity to join a vital and urgent policy debate.”
Ex-Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron pointed out that all six “continue to back policies that send less fortunate folk to prison for the same thing. It’s disgusting”.
And current Lib Dem leadership hopeful Ed Davey observed: “They might all be historical confessions but the way this Tory leadership is going it’s like they’re all off their heads.”
That certainly appears to be the conclusion of the satirists, who have been having great fun concocting fictional pasts for other MPs. I particularly enjoyed the idea of Jacob Rees-Mogg having used camphorated tincture of laudanum with his nanny in 1899.
And apparently Larry the Downing Street Cat has admitted a continuing fondness for catnip. Well, why not?
In the interests of full disclosure, This Writer is happy to admit a long history of substance abuse including cocktails of diesel, metal polish and (when I can get it) Uranium-239. We journalists run on heavy fuel!
But there is a serious question here.
The issue of illegal drugs has been a major political football for decades. Remember the “war on drugs”? The lives of millions of people have been affected – many ruined – by organised drug-pushers; Michael Gove wasn’t wrong about that. And many people have been punished – sometimes jailed – simply for possession of certain substances.
And the hypocrisy of the mass media should also be taken into account. Remember the thunderous furore after Diane Abbott drank a mojito on a train? In comparison, we get hardly a whimper after people who may become prime minister confessed to serious historical crimes.
Against this background, it is right to question the attitude of these confessors. Let’s have a poll:
[polldaddy poll=10339049]Source: Tory leadership hopeful Andrea Leadsom becomes 6th candidate to admit drugs past – Mirror Online
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These obnoxious clowns appear to be thinking that taking drugs is some kind of weird badge of honour. To me it highlights just how unsuitable these stupid people are for any kind of responsible office. They really are criminally irresponsible.
They seem to be trying to outdo each other on who took the most and hardest of drugs. They are like a bunch of children and, in my opinion, it highlights just how totally unsuitable are any of them for any kind of responsible office.
Well they are cool man cool as being in a fridge in a deep freeze in Antartica.
To put things in perspective, it’s not just drug pushers that have ruined peoples’ lives, in some cases the anti-drug Laws have ruined peoples’ lives too. Try getting a decent job with a drug conviction on your record. I know a man who lost his job as a University Lecturer when the DBS check revealed a 30 year old conviction for growing a tiny cannabis plant in a plant pot on his kitchen window sill when he was a student. Another old friend has been on the sick for many years with PTSD has a result of his experience in prison in the early 90s for smuggling cannabis from Africa. Drug laws ruin peoples’ lives in all sorts of ways.
Surely if one of them could, claim and provide proof, that they’re still coked-up, they’ve walk it, they’re Selfservatives after all.
Polls don’t show with firefox.
I can see it!
It’s the sheer arrogance of believing that they are “bullet proof” and can admit to anything with no consequences – hardly setting a good example to others.
Boris has also recently set a precedence of being allowed toopenly lie to the people without penalty.
If all these confessions are supposed to help ordinary people relate to them, then maybe someone should remind them that it is their own class who can claim to be the biggest ‘users’ of all. They can afford it, most of us can’t.
Leaving aside for a moment how vile the lot of them are – I’d rather have one with a druggy past than a religious present (May, Blair) – such people are delusional and as the late Christopher Hitchens pointed out, may harbour a yearning for the Apocalypse. Not the sort of people you want in a position of power.
My understanding is the Tony Blair converted to Catholicism. I don’t believe that he was on the side of the angels whilst he was in government.
They’re jealous of George Osborne purported drug use, and nine jobs. There were snickers in Parliament when Gideon proposed a sugar tax on sodas, including Coke.
Methinks that what is made of people’s pasts is the issue. Given how others have been treated (now virtually unknown actors are getting it), they are all trying to get their confessions and apologies in before they are exposed by the Gutter Press. It seems that, these days, one is not entitled to a past, or to an opinion. We’ve seen even old ladies the victims of twitter and facebook trawling. If these candidates didn’t get in first, the media wold make mincemeat of them.
meh . . give them all random drug tests . . .
Yes, it is important to know, because they hold/shall hold very powerful positions in the British government(making important decisions over ordinary people).This will show whether they are corrupt or not. Mind you, under this Tory(Mrs May’s) regime, many low-paid workers(such as trainee teachers, post persons, cooks, kitchen porters, cleaners etc) are already subjected to more intrusive scrutiny(DBS Clearance, Security Clearance etc) than these very powerful politicians!