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Overwhelmingly Bad Vibes: What the UK’s Politicians Would Be Like On the Sesh

This week, Dominic Cummings tweeted about Cabinet members taking drugs. But what exactly would that look like?
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Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Dominic Cummings’ allegations regarding drug use by members of the Cabinet came as a huge shock to us all yesterday. Unfortunately, he didn’t go into much detail about that drug use, leaving the nation wondering which of our top politicians get on it, and how.

Good news: here are some completely unsubstantiated imaginings of Tory dabbling that I’ve just entirely made up.

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BORIS JOHNSON

Renowned truth-monger Johnson once confirmed he had “tried cocaine at university”, claiming that it had “no effect” on him – which may in fact be true, given his ego is permanently turned up to 11.

You can imagine Johnson’s main arena of narcotic dalliance being those famously louche parties at the Tuscan palazzo of a certain Russian media dynasty, at which the host gets Boris spangled, before playing a game of truth or dare, in which his guest shares classified documents and other state secrets while pretending to be the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

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Photo: ALEXANDROS MICHAILIDIS / Alamy Stock Photo

DOMINIC RAAB

The Foreign Secretary’s psychonaut speakeasy hosts some of the world’s best idlers (or Tory donors, as they’re sometimes called) taking the knee for their monthly menu of narcotic adventures, à la Dom. That was, until a recent mishap.

Nutshell was that Dom got everyone battered on some mystery potion, him more so than anyone. He started making a fry-up to prove he had no cash-flow problems, but he was very, very high and absent-mindedly wandered to the top of the garden, locking the patio doors behind him. Suddenly, from his inter-dimensional hammock, he noticed a fire engulfing the kitchen, then a few screaming, desperate faces at the patio doors. “Don’t worry, I’ll call the Fire Brigade,” he assured them, yet promptly forgot to do so as his addled brain snagged on the shame of having to rely on public sector workers. Next thing, the place was a pile of charred bodies and rubble. “I hadn’t realised how important escaping a burning building was in order to remain alive,” he later told the police.

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PRITI PATEL

Brought back into the Cabinet despite losing her secret Israeli crank contact, Patel has become a widely admired no-nonsense fixer of the Downing Street party scene, organising daily RAF flyovers of the English Channel to that end. Any dinghies carrying amphetamine-based drugs that tweak her hyperactive radge gland are allowed into port, while boats without stash are unceremoniously sunk in full view of the GB News film crews.

The lucky few who meet these stringent entry requirements are then taken to Patel’s terrordome-cum-nightclub, Studio Eleventy-Three, where they are force-fed opioid and stimulant cocktails and obliged to run the OD gauntlet for the host and her guests’ amusement. The idea is that dying of an overdose will act as a deterrent should any of them ever try to bring in drugs again. 

GAVIN WILLIAMSON

Gav is the go-to man in SW1 for psychedelics. Cabinet colleagues twigged he was off his tits on the job when he said: “I don’t very much believe in the stick, but it’s amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot.”

Thereafter, the heads in the 1922 Committee became regulars in the chief whip’s office – that was until, during a particularly heavy acid trip, Gavin’s pet tarantula, Cronus, started crawling over their faces. Nevertheless, despite both this and the belief that a “free speech champion” is more important than ventilating schools, he remains part of HM Government. 

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SAJID JAVID AND RISHI SUNAK

Back in their days as City whizz-kids, Rishi and Sajid were widely known as hard-partying sidekicks. Javid used to host the Deutsche Bank Christmas do, attended by top-ranking cartel bosses who, as a way of thanking the institution for laundering their money, brought along copious amounts of product.

Sunak, of course, has hinted at his fondness for coke, although back then he was very much the button-up wingman to “The Saj”, whose appetites were so legendary that it’s rumoured he triggered the 2008 global financial crisis after investing 95 percent of the fund he managed on Gabonese iboga derivatives when six days deep into a gak bender (after three years of consultation, Cameron’s government refused to legalise iboga out of fear that its primary property, putting the user in touch with the repressed memories of their guilt-ridden misdeeds so as to overcome them, threatened to fatally destabilise the Conservative Party).

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Photo: Russell Hart / Alamy Stock Photo

GRANT SHAPPS

Combining his Transport portfolio with a fondness for adopting alter egos, Shapps – whose name is a portmanteau of “shit apps” – launched a Deliveroo-style start-up called Magic Taxi to solve some of the government’s supply-chain problems. So far, it has cost £22 billion to get Jordan from Croydon to cycle over with a rucksack full of gear.

MICHAEL GOVE

Gove’s fondness for a line or two of confidence enhancer is well documented, although he says he’s now knocked it on the head. Likewise, his dabblings with the Sacred Vine, ayahuasca, have been mothballed (“the demons are merciless”, he told Conservative Home’s gear correspondent).

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However, a recent trip to his Aberdeen roots has seen a return to familiar territory, when his apparent concern for the family fishing business was a front for wider shenanigans, namely his network of “ecstasy trawlers” that came in direct from Rotterdam. He has since started a tech-house night at the city’s Club Treachery, and supplied the eccies for the Tory Party Conference afters in August, held at a secret three-storey club under the Houses of Parliament given emergency planning permission by Minister of Tuck Shop and Housing, Robert Jenrick, earlier this year.

LIZ TRUSS

With the Tory gearheads’ regular supply of high-quality, well-regulated, tariff-free stash from Brussels having hit some snags, “The Truss” has been sent out to scope for new dealers, deliriously trumpeting agreements struck for Djiboutian khat (“which is well better than magic mushrooms”) and Surinamese salvia divinorum. Meanwhile, a landmark deal with Jamaican Yardies now sees us paying just £25,000 for an ounce of sensi.

MATT HANCOCK

Tory grandees had long suspected Matt was permanently off his bean on account of his struggles with emotional regulation – a tendency to burst into tears unbidden, an inability to judge appropriate distances to stand from female strangers, laughter amid mass death. There were further misgivings about his gear-procurement record after news broke that his dealer, Piers from the Cock and Balls, had been awarded £300 million in a no-bid government contract and came back with just 30 canisters of nitrous.