British prime minister hopeful Michael Gove said he used cocaine “on several occasions” roughly two decades ago while the Tory politician was still a journalist.
Gove is competing to take over Conservative Party leadership from Theresa May, who resigned as party leader after failing to reach an agreement for Britain’s exit from the European Union. May remains prime minister until a new leader is chosen in late July. There are 11 candidates.
“I took drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago. At the time I was a young journalist. It was a mistake. I look back and I think, I wish I hadn’t done that,” Gove, now 51, told the Daily Mail.
Gove worked for a newspaper in Aberdeen, Scottish television, and the BBC before entering politics.
President Trump met Gove in London last week and was interviewed by him for the Times of London just before his inauguration in 2017. But just before the meeting Trump said he did not know Gove and praised his rivals Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt.
Gove, who is the U.K. environment secretary, insists that he should not be taken out of the running for party leader over the drug use.
“It was 20 years ago and yes, it was a mistake,” he said. “But I don’t believe that past mistakes disqualify you.”
The environment head made the admission ahead of the publication of “Michael Gove: A Man in a Hurry,” a book by political journalist Owen Bennett, which contains references to Gove’s drug use.
Rory Stewart, the international development secretary and another of the 11 candidates for prime minister, has already apologized for smoking opium at a wedding in Iran in 1994.
Johnson, the favorite, was asked about claims he had taken cocaine during college by a magazine in 2008 He replied: “That was when I was 19.” In 2005 he admitted being given the drug but suggested he had not actually used it, saying: “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.”
Hunt told the Times of London he drank a cannabis lassi while backpacking through India.
Gove, Johnson, and Hunt were all at Oxford University together in the late 1980s.
