Mail on Sunday revisits Cameron and drugs questions

The Mail on Sunday's Simon Walters has another non-story tomorrow about David Cameron and his drugs past.  He rehashes an old story about an alleged attempt - during the 2005 Tory leadership contest - by rival camps to probe the extent of Mr Cameron's use of drugs.  I understand that what the MoS prints is partial and exaggerated.  My guess is that all of these stories about Cameron and cannabis during his early life are an attempt to inch towards a bigger story about Cameron and harder drugs in his later life but the newspapers have no evidence to support these attempts - despite huge efforts by Fleet Street's 'finest' raincoated investigators.  A Populus poll, taken last week, found that 81% were not concerned by drug use at school or university.  64%, however, thought that use of "more serious" drugs would matter and 71% thought drug use during working life was of concern.

Comments

[Hug a Druggie]

David Cameron is doing a wonderful job. What if he did take cannabis? It clearly has not affected him in any way, I think.

[Alex Forsyth]

David Cameron has had plenty of opportunity to deny that he ever took "hard" drugs. Instead he has come out with highly ambiguous statements such as the declaration that he has never taken Class A drugs since he has been an MP.

If Cameron had only briefly dabbled in soft drugs at school and then been honest about his past I think this would indeed have become a "non-issue". However, Cameron's statements do not exclude the possibility that he continued to take cannabis between the age of 15 and his 'normal university experience' whatever that may mean.

For many, myself included, that would not be a "non-issue"

Then of course we have the question of "hard" drug and recent poll has shown that a majority of the public regard this as a serious and relevant matter. Of course the press will continue to dig.

If Mr Cameron has indeed never taken hard drugs why does he not come forward and say so in plain English?

It isn't an unreasonable question, whatever his cheerleaders may think.

[HF]

another story from the "Paul Dacre wants his peerage" paper.

[Og]

You miss the point, Hug. No one cares if the spliffs is the extent of it. But if Cameron's enemies can beef the story up into a discussion of whether he used Class A drugs - specifically, coke - as an adult, then it is hard for Cameron to articulate Tory drugs policy, particularly if a tough line is taken (pun intended).

[CCHQ Spy]

Everything in the Mail on Sunday needs to be taken with a heavy helping of salt.

[Alex Forsyth]

Exactly, and I consider continued evasiveness to be as bad as a lie. The press hate being given the runaround. They tend to get nasty about it.

The story that everybody seems to have missed is the one I outlined above, namely that with his ambiguous statements Cameron has left open the possibility that he was taking cannabis over a period of years from the age of 15 at least through to his university days.

In talking about 'a normal university experience' he is of course being appallingly disingenuous. My wife and I both had 'normal university experiences' which didn't including snorting coke, so in what way is that any kind of answer to a straight question?

I don't think - I know - that increasingly large sums of money are being offered for information regarding Cameron's past, so if the man has any secrets to hide he'd better get them off his chest now and hope the rumpus really will blow over.

[michael mcgough]

All that Cameron needs to do is categorically state without qualification that he has never ever taken A list drugs and that would be the end of it.

[Editor]

But what would be the next question the media would latch on to, Michael? Defending his right to a private past is not unreasonable.

[Alex Forsyth]

Defending his right to a private past is not unreasonable.

What should and should not be private ought to be for the electorate - not the individual concerned - to decide.

Where do you draw the line? You surely wouldn't allow an embezzler or a child molester to have a private past if they wanted to be PM?

Do you draw the line at serious criminal offences? No reason to exclude coke-snorting then.

[Modern Conservative]

But where does it stop? Do we want every MP and Councillor, AM, MSP and MEP to fill out a form saying everything they have done which might be of some vague interest to the electorate?

I'd like people who have led normal lives in politics and if we are to subject eveyone to such absurd levels of scrutiny we won't get any.

Anyway don't you remember the nonsense that happened when William Hague told people to answer the Cannabis question honestly.

None of your business is the best answer available.

[Annabel Herriott]

Is Alex Forsyth a member or supporter of the Labour Party? I really think it would be helpful if posters preferences were a condition of posting, as then we could all make a balanced assessment of their post.

[malcolm]

Hear hear Tim. This is just a non story par excellence. What would be a story is if Cameron wished to soften the Conservative party stance on drugs.
HF , the chances of Paul Dacre getting a peerage from the Labour or modern Conservative party are nil. I sincerely doubt he would want it anyway,Dacre does not see himself as establishment figure.

[david]

David Cameron was given ample opportunity to deny he had 'ever' taken class A drugs.
see this
http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=981

[Alex Forsyth]

Is Alex Forsyth a member or supporter of the Labour Party?

No I'm not. I'm a longstanding member (36 years) of the Conservative Party who detests Cameron and everything he stands for, including this week's oh-so-precious group photo of the snob-thug Bullingdon Club.

I'm sorry that touchy Annabelle has no sensible responses to these sensible questions. They were of course raised a couple of years ago by Derek Conway (=David Davis)

Could Davis and Conway perchance be Labour Party supporters?

[DavidDPB]

"No I'm not. I'm a longstanding member (36 years) of the Conservative Party who detests Cameron and everything he stands for, including this week's oh-so-precious group photo of the snob-thug Bullingdon Club."

So, you joined the party when its previous leader had been a peer, and the one before that an old Etonian, and which had a higher proportion of old public school boy populated its benches than the alternative at the time?

[Alex Forsyth]

So, you joined the party when its previous leader had been a peer, and the one before that an old Etonian, and which had a higher proportion of old public school boy populated its benches than the alternative at the time?

So? We've moved on from the past, as "your lot" would normally be the first to point out.

Anyway I doubt whether any of the previous OE leaders were members of the ghastly Bullingdon Club.

However you rightly highlight the point that Cameron is essentially a throwback to the past.

He's not only a throwback but a last throw of the dice for what I believe to be the terminally declining post-Thatcher Conservative Party.

[DavidDPB]

I just find it funny that someone who professes such concern about the 'upper class' inhabiting the party would have chosen to join the Conservative Party at a time when it was even more prevalent.

I would have thought the future was not minding what class people were, myself. But I'm not a Guardian reader, so such things naturally fail to concern me.

[Alex Forsyth]

I joined the Conservative Party because - barring the racist National Front - it was still the nearest thing to a right-wing patriotic party in existence.

Under Thatcher the party rightly became increasingly classless. Many radical Thatcherites used to address each other as "Comrade" and I have no problem with that.

Of course a patriotic Old Etonian can become just as much of a Conservative comrade as the next man. However, an Old Etonian who sets himself up as a PC liberal and trails "Hooray Henry" baggage in his wake, cannot.

Nicholas Ridley was an Old Etonian too, but he lived it down and became "one of us". There have been plenty more OE patriots, but DC is not among them.

Cameron is not to my taste. Never has been and never will be. Had he attended Gasworks Lane Comp he might have been less offensive, but then he would never have become leader of the party.

[rebecca]

I think Cameron is a Trojan horse. He has so many stories in his past that I wonder how he became Leader. Wasn't there some sort of vetting programme?

[Jack Stone]

There is a lot of complete tripe written on this site but this thread really takes the biscuit. People like Alex Forsyth are the reason why we have had ten years of Labour government.
If we barred anyone who went to a Public school or did anything wrong in there life "before" they entered politics than Parliament would be full to the brime of second rate idiots who were incapable of running a corner store let alone the country.
Two things. One you will not win the election or for that matter deserve to if you do not appeal to moderate opinion. Secondly in David Cameron we have someone who is the best leader we could possibly have and the Prime Minister the country needs.

[michael mcgough]

"But what would be the next question the media would latch on to, Michael? Defending his right to a private past is not unreasonable."
Fair enough Ed. but where does the past stop,upon election as MP,election as leader or when he started worked as a party advisor/researcher?

[Richard Carey]

Again, a non-story for me by the Mail. We knew that the "drugs question" had arisen during the leadership campaign, and been dealt with, but I wasn't personally aware of the extent to which the Davis campaign resolved internally as per this article not to pursue it further, so as not to damage the party as a whole by their own line and tenor of inquiry. A laudable position - would that some of our contributors here could bring themselves to show such discipline.

I have written here before that I believe that the line of a "private past" is the right one in the present circumstances, and still believe that we should continue to hold it regardless of the Mail's grubby poking around.

As for the question of where that line should be drawn:

Michael McGoough: Fair enough Ed. but where does the past stop,upon election as MP,election as leader or when he started worked as a party advisor/researcher?

I would suggest that that decision is not made at the urging of an opposition party supporter for a start.

[Gunther]

The line of 'a private past' is acceptable is up to the electors, not the person with a dubious past.

[Richard Carey]

I think that you missed a word or two out there, Gunther, but I think I get your drift. Perhaps you should have been kind enough, or sensible enough, to have placed "dubious past" in quotation marks?

That aside - I think that this is probably one of the situations where the publis interest test applied by the PCC to press reporting is quite applicable.

The allegations alluding to Mr Cameron's "private past" as a schoolboy to which the MoS are referring are something that the tabloids think they might be able to get the public interested in. That is not the same thing as it being in the public interest.

Incidentally, a question for Gunther, Alex and others. If the validity of a private past remaining private were as you contest a matter for (by definition very public) scrutiny and assessment by the electorate, how would it then remain private if that electorate then decided it should? Your own test lets the genie out of the bottle and unleashes an oxymoron, surely?

[Alex Forsyth]

If we barred anyone who went to a Public school or did anything wrong in there life "before" they entered politics than Parliament would be full to the brime of second rate idiots who were incapable of running a corner store let alone the country.

My apologies, Jack, I didn't realise you attended a "top public school". Presumably your alma mater was one of those avant-garde arty-farty places where they allow free expression in spelling and like matters.

Actually, because you obviously haven't noticed, Parliament is already full to the "brime" of second rate idiots who are incapable of running a corner store let alone the country.

[Gareth]

Alex,

You sound like a member of the SWP with this class-warrior nonsense.