What effect will Gove’s cocaine admission have on his leadership chances?

Politics Explained: Environment secretary's revelation differs from most other political drug confessions not only in that it relates to cocaine, but also that the use took place in a period after university when he was in employment

(PA)

It is often assumed that an admission of having taken illegal narcotics poses a mortal threat to any politician’s prospects.

But in fact, at least since recreational drug use became more widespread in the 1960s, there are few examples of political careers being ended by a confession of this sort.

Although cannabis remains a class B outlawed substance, potentially attracting prison sentences of five years for possession and 14 for dealing, new additions to the ever-growing list of MPs and ministers who admit having tried it is greeted often with little more than a shrug.

Crucially, the illicit thrill is almost always said to have happened during the politico’s student years, when a little experimentation appears to be all but expected.

And curiously, many of those admitting smoking cannabis claim not to have enjoyed it or to have taken it accidentally. Oliver Letwin said his only encounter with “dope” was when a fellow-student had, without his knowledge, put it in his pipe.

Former US president Bill Clinton famously insisted that he “didn’t inhale” when smoking a reefer in Oxford in the 1960s – prompting the more laid-back Barack Obama to respond many years later in possibly more forgiving times that he had inhaled because “that was the point”.

If cannabis use in the distant past is something that can nowadays be dealt with by taking a deep breath and blurting out a confession, it remains to be seen whether the same is true of cocaine.

Use of the class A drug may be seen as an unremarkable indulgence in some nightclubs and bars up and down the country and even around middle-class dinner-tables in the bigger cities, but it is still regarded as a heinous vice by large swathes of the population, including particularly high proportions of Tory voters in leafy suburbs and market towns.

David Cameron made a point of refusing to respond to questions about past drug use on the grounds that politicians should not be subjected to the retrospective policing of their lives before they went into public service. But this was never enough to fully shake off persistent – and unproved – rumours about cocaine.

In earlier years, when running for the mayoralty of liberal, cosmopolitan London, Boris Johnson admitted to having sampled cocaine as a student, while insisting that it had “no pharmacological, psychotropic or any other effect on me whatsoever”.

But despite having told GQ magazine that he remembered the experience “vividly”, when he got a little closer to challenging for the premiership, he backed away from his confession, saying that: “I was once at university offered a white substance, none of which went up my nose, and I have no idea whether it was cocaine or not.”

Mr Gove’s revelation differs from most other political drug confessions not only in that it relates to cocaine, but also that the use took place in a period – albeit two decades ago – after university when he was in employment. His description of taking the substance on a number of social occasions does not fit with the usual scenario of brief youthful experimentation at university.

Chatter in Westminster was that while it might take some momentum out of his otherwise well-regarded leadership campaign, it would not necessarily doom his chances of succeeding Theresa May.

It is generally thought that a skeleton of this kind is best dragged out of the closet early in any campaign, to avoid it bursting into the open at the time of maximum potential damage near the conclusion of the race.

But there was uncertainty about how it will be received by the socially conservative Tory members in the country who will ultimately decide Ms May’s successor as party leader.

And it made Mr Gove the target of charges of “hypocrisy” from opponents such as Liberal Democrat leadership contender Jo Swinson, whose admission that she smoked cannabis at university was robbed of much of its potential impact by her party’s commitment to legalising the drug.

Green MP Caroline Lucas said: “I couldn’t care less about what a politician did in private 20 years ago. What I can’t stand is the rank hypocrisy of potential prime ministers ‘owning up’ to drug use whilst backing policies which threaten those using drugs now with prison, and allows criminal gangs to profit.

“It’s all well and good for these Tory politicians to offer mea culpas as they make attempts at the leadership, but to do so while backing policies which disproportionately criminalise and imprison young, black people is just utterly crass.”