This week the government grid is all about “crime week”, and Whitehall has kicked off with an anti-drugs crackdown. The PM is specifically targeting middle-class drug users, with policing minister Kit Malthouse this morning calling for drug sniffer dogs to be positioned outside Sloane Square station as well as Tottenham Hale. Just one problem with this anti-drugs push: the hypocrisy.

The 2019 Tory leadership election brought now reformed Tory drug-takers out of the woodwork:

• Boris, cocaine: “I tried it at university and I remember it vividly. And it achieved no pharmacological, psychotropical or any other effect on me whatsoever.”
• Gove, cocaine: “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.”
• Hunt, cannabis: “I think I had a cannabis lassi when I went backpacking through India”
• McVey, cannabis: “tried some pot” when she was “much younger”.
• Raab, cannabis: “At university, I tried cannabis, not very often as I was into sport”
• Hancock, cannabis: “tried cannabis a few times as a student but has not taken any illicit drugs since”.
• Leadsom, cannabis: “I smoked weed at university and have never smoked it again since.”

The idea that a Tory Cabinet full of confessed recreational drug takers will crack down on people like themselves is straining credibility and will play into Labour’s “one rule for them and another for us” mantra. No. 10 now want to take middle-class drug users’ passports off them, foreign diplomatic trips are going to be rather empty from now on. Maybe this is why Justice Secretary Raab yesterday said police don’t investigate historic crimes…