Tory leadership candidate says he took the drug as a young journalist, adding ‘it was a mistake’

Michael Gove has admitted to taking cocaine, joining fellow Tory leadership contenders in confessing to drug use.

“I took drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago,” he told the Daily Mail. “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.”

The admission comes as Theresa May spends the final days of her premiership in Downing Street, with a number of the prime minister’s Conservative colleagues vying to replace her.

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Gove, whom the bookmakers have as third in the race behind Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, insisted his past crimes should not be held against him in the leadership race. “I don’t believe that past mistakes disqualify you,” Gove said.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday, Gove’s leadership rival Dominic Raab said he did not believe the admission would have an impact on Gove’s chances in the leadership race. He said: “I certainly don’t see it barring him from this race in any way. I rather admire his honesty.”

Raab, who has previously admitted taking cannabis as a student, added: “It was a long time ago and pretty few and far between. I have never taken cocaine or any class-A drugs.”

He said class-A drugs were “a bit different” but added: “I’m not going to cast any further aspersions on Michael or anyone else who is just honest about being human and doing the things that some young people do – not everyone, obviously – and holding their hand up and saying: ‘I got that wrong, move on.’”

Later on the same programme, Craig Oliver, who was ex-prime minister David Cameron’s chief spin doctor, suggested the admission could become an issue that overshadows Gove’s leadership campaign messages. The Tory rank and file were socially conservative, Oliver said, and “it’s not the norm for them to see people taking cocaine at parties and that kind of thing”.

“The problem I think he’s going to face is that it becomes a big issue that he’s going to have to face,” Oliver said. “The next television or radio interview, there’s going to be a bit more probing on what other drugs have you taken, what were the circumstances?

“I’m also not sure – although I do think that he’s handling it right in terms of being as honest as possible about it – I’m not sure that the line that ‘I wasn’t sure I was going to go into public life’ is a great one. And … I would be advising him to change that and say: ‘I was young and foolish I did a few foolish things, I regret that and I would like to move on.’”

Asked about Gove’s admission, Jeremy Corbyn said: “Well, he has decided to tell us what his past was like, that’s his business.”

Asked if he believed mistakes in the past should disqualify potential leadership candidates, the Labour leader said: “No, I think people should tell us what they have done and move on in life. But I’m unconcerned about Michael Gove’s past life or behaviour to be quite honest.”

Asked whether he had taken drugs in the past, Corbyn said: “No, I’ve led a very normal life in many ways.”

The Green party MP Caroline Lucas tweeted: “Rank hypocrisy of minister admitting to ‘mistakes’ on drug use while backing policies that perpetuate harm. From locking up disproportionate number of young, black men, to treating drug misuse as crime rather than health issue, prohibition fails us all.”

The environment secretary’s declaration comes ahead of the publication of a book about him by the journalist Owen Bennett titled Michael Gove: A Man in a Hurry. According to the book, he admitted to having used cocaine to his advisers during the 2016 Tory leadership contest when they were putting him “through his paces”.

An inside source reportedly said Gove replied: “Yes, cocaine,” when he was asked if he had ever taken drugs.

Quick guide Tory party leadership contest Show Hide What happens next in the Tory party leadership race? As she announced on 24 May, Theresa May stepped down formally as Conservative leader on Friday 7 June, although she remains in place as prime minister until her successor is chosen. In a Conservative leadership contest MPs hold a series of votes, in order to narrow down the initially crowded field to two leadership hopefuls, who go to a postal ballot of members.

How does the voting work? MPs choose one candidate, in a secret ballot held in a committee room in the House of Commons. The votes are tallied and the results announced on the same day. In the first round any candidate who won the support of less than 17 MPs was eliminated. In the second round anybody reaching less than 33 votes was eliminated. In subsequent rounds the bottom placed contender drops out until there are only two left. The party membership then chooses between them. When will the results be announced?

The postal ballot of members has begun, and the Tory party says it will announce the new prime minister on 23 July.. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

“The book is correct,” the former justice secretary told the Daily Mail. “I did take drugs. It is something I deeply regret. Drugs damage lives. They are dangerous and it was a mistake.

“Obviously it will be for my colleagues in parliament and members of the Conservative party to decide now if I should be leader. I think all politicians have lives before politics. Certainly when I was working as a journalist I didn’t imagine I would go into politics or public service. I didn’t act with an eye to that.”

Gove joins a growing number of Conservative politicians to have discussed their various transgressions with drugs.

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Rory Stewart told the Telegraph last week that he had smoked opium in Iran at a wedding, but that his hosts, a poor family, had most likely put very little of the class A drug in the pipe and it had little effect upon him.

The foreign secretary has also been asked whether he took drugs when he was younger. Hunt told the Times: “I think I had a cannabis lassi when I went backpacking through India ... That is almost as naughty as wheat fields,” he said, referring to May’s confession when asked the naughtiest thing she ever did.

In 2005, on Have I Got News For You, Johnson said: “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.”

Years later, he confirmed that he snorted cocaine and smoked “dope” as a teenager.

• This article was amended on 10 June 2019. Rory Stewart told the Telegraph last week that he had smoke opium in Iran, not in Afghanistan as an earlier version said. This has been corrected.