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Yesterday I observed that there is a stark set of double standards operating about the cocaine use of Michael Gove vs Boris Johnsson in this leadership contest. Johnson has now denied he ever took the drug. I have scoured the archives for everything we know about it. Here it is.
In 2005, under pressure from Paul Merton and Ian Hislop on HIGNFY, Johnson said he'd been offered cocaine and characteristically made a joke about it:
“I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar.”
“I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar.”
Then in July 2007, Mr Johnson gave an interview to GQ magazine. This particular passage was widely reported at the time but weirdly is now absent from the online version of the interview. I'm not sure why. He apparently told them he tried cocaine at Oxford. I've enquired with GQ.
If this is an accurate quote (it is still widely reported to this day) note the story has morphed. It now says Johnson tried it but it had no effect. Regardless of this passage....
...he later expanded on this account with Janet Street Porter in Marie Claire in 2008. This exchange followed. He doesn't demur from the direct allegation that he "snorted coke", he just says he did it when he was 19. Seems quite conclusive.
This led to a series of headlines like this.
At the time, Johnson's team rowed back. They issued this statement on the 5th April.
Fastforward to today his office is now saying this version is correct. He is ergo absolved because he didn't insufflate (the statment implies he didn't accept it at all) and even then he doesn't know for sure if it were coke.
That, however, goes against the account he gave in the original 2007 GQ interview. Piers Morgan pressed him on whether or not it actually went into his nose. Johnson replied: "It must have done, yes, but it didn't do much for me I can tell you."
Then in 2014, he expanded on the incident further but this time more shambolically, in an interview with the Guardian headlined: "Do you want me to be photographed in my Bullingdon Club uniform? With a spliff? Now you’re talking."
He confirms he attempted to snort the substance.
He confirms he attempted to snort the substance.
In sum we know that at some point Mr Johnson was offered at least something he thought was cocaine and attempted to take it.
His defence has been manifold and mutated and reverted over time.
His defence has been manifold and mutated and reverted over time.
He has said he didn't snort it. But that is also something at one point or other he has said he did. Then said he tried but failed to do. The story is told and retold in different ways, depending on the time and the audience.
He says it may not have been cocaine anyway. But clearly at the very least, at the time, he thought it was.
They are, in many ways, odd defences. Often he's not denying he was at the least an attempted cocaine user, his absolution, apparently is that he was a bad one.
They are, in many ways, odd defences. Often he's not denying he was at the least an attempted cocaine user, his absolution, apparently is that he was a bad one.
This is some pretty high calibre dissembling. It would be good to hear from Mr. Johnson to settle these questions. It remains curious to me why Mr. Gove's campaign has been derailed by these revelations, when Mr Johnson's appears to be sailing smoothly ahead.
I don't especially care if Johnson or Gove have taken cocaine. But I do think we should treat them in the same way. Moreover if the lesson from all this is that politicians who are straightforward about it are punished and those not rewarded, that is a sad indictment.
