“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.”
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“You’ve taken drugs, you’ve admitted to taking cocaine on several occasions, are you really going to give people a criminal record for laughing gas?”
Michael Gove says “yes” because he’s learned from his experience #Ridge
The levelling up secretary said he had learned it was a “mistake” and it was “absolutely vital” to deal with the “scourge” of laughing gas.
Asked if the public might view his stance on laughing gas as “hypocritical”, he told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday: “No, I think it is because I have learned.”
Pressed on what he had learned, Gove said: “That it is a mistake — worse than a mistake — to regard drug taking as somehow acceptable.”
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Empty cannisters of laughing gas lying on the street in Birmingham.
Mike Kemp via Getty Images
Confirming the ban on laughing gas, Gove said: “I think anyone who has the opportunity to walk through our parks in our major cities will have seen these little silver canisters, which are examples of people not only spoiling public spaces but taking a drug which can have a psychological and neurological effect and one that contributes to antisocial behaviour overall.”
Laughing gas is the second most commonly used drug among 16 to 24-year-olds in England after cannabis.
The decision goes further than the recommendations of a review commissioned by the Home Office, which stopped short of recommending a ban after examining the dangers of the substance.
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Gove accepted that ministers had been advised not to ban laughing gas but said the government had taken a different view.
“Of course it is absolutely right that we uphold the law in this case,” he added.
“Yes, the advisory committee offered their advice but ultimately it is ministers who are responsible.
“And we believe collectively that it is absolutely vital that we deal with this scourge and in the same way.”
Asked if they believed Boris Johnson told the truth when he appeared before MPs this week, not a single member of the Question Time audience put their hand up.
Even more worryingly for the former prime minister, the programme was being broadcast from Newcastle-under-Lyme, part of the famous Red Wall of seats where he is still said to be popular with voters.
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It was a fitting denouement to a miserable week for a man who was still in Downing Street less than a year ago.
Johnson suffered two major blows to his hopes of a political comeback within a few hours on Wednesday afternoon.
His irascible performance in front of parliament’s privileges committee, which is investigating claims he misled the Commons over partygate, left few in any doubt that he will be found guilty.
Should the committee decide to impose a suspension of more than 10 days, and parliament votes for it, he could face a by-election in his Uxbridge seat.
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On the same day, Johnson’s hopes of leading a wide-scale Tory revolt against his arch-nemesis Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal ended in failure when only 21 of his colleagues followed him into the No lobby.
Meanwhile, while all this was going on, Rishi Sunak enjoyed a game of cricket in the Downing Street garden with England’s T20 world cup-winning team.
Rishi Sunak enjoyed a game of cricket in the No10 garden with England’s T20 World Cup winning and children from the ACE cricket programme on Wednesday.
Simon Walker/10 Downing Street
As he surveys the political scene this weekend, Johnson will surely be contemplating the very real possibility that his ambition of a triumphant return to No.10 will be unfulfilled.
Many experienced observers of Westminster believe that the game is up for the former PM.
One senior Tory told HuffPost UK: “He’s just like that drunk uncle at the wedding who is there at the reception but you don’t really know why.”
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Others believe that even Johnson’s media cheerleaders have decided to move on and throw their weight behind Sunak as the next election draws nearer.
“I thought it was very telling there was a front page of the Telegraph was very negative about him after his committee appearance,” said one former cabinet member. “I think that’s a weathervane.
“I think it’s a cocktail of the partygate stuff and the Brexit vote. It could have gone the other way – he could have had a major triumph in the committee and there could have been a big rebellion, but in the end it was just the usual suspects who voted with him.
“A line has been drawn and people just want to move on.”
One Tory MP told HuffPost UK: “His defence at the committee was basically ‘I’m an idiot’. Some people might accept that, but I think it just reaffirmed that him coming back is just not a realistic possibility.
“Even if Rishi falls under a bus, literally or politically, it’s not going to Boris who steps in to the breach. A significant enough number of MPs just wouldn’t wear it. Most of them realise he’s not an asset to them any more.”
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Tory peer and election guru Lord Hayward told Sky News: “His support is diminishing and his impact on the party is diminishing the longer Rishi Sunak is prime minister.”
Former minister Caroline Nokes was even more forthright, declaring that Johnson is “finished”.
“I think there was a very clear message from his own ministers back in the summer that they didn’t want him to carry on,” she told ITV’s Peston show.
“He didn’t choose to stand against Rishi Sunak back in the autumn when we had the second leadership challenge.
“As far as I’m concerned, Boris Johnson is not coming back as prime minister.”
Johnson still does have his hardcore supporters who will defend him to the bitter end.
Jacob Rees-Mogg told Channel 4 News “he’s winning in the court of public opinion”, while Nadine Dorries said the privileges committee is “a kangaroo court” determined to find him guilty regardless of the evidence.
One Johnson ally said that if the partygate inquiry had been properly dealt with a year ago, he would probably still be PM.
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“It would have helped restore perspective and pedestrianise what was portrayed as sinister and dramatic at the time,” they told HuffPost UK.
“The world now knows that police looked at the legality and found the PM and Rishi at fault for one event that the public would totally understand.
“People were working hard in No.10 and were there for long and endless hours – they weren’t heading in for a party. And the bad stuff unveiled by the Sue Gray report was a shock to Boris as much as anyone.
“We all lost the plot getting obsessed with partygate when we should have been looking at things like the anaemic economic growth, high inflation, the delays to HS2 and the fact that corporation tax is too high.”
However, the ally did agree with Johnson’s detractors that there is no chance of him returning to Downing Street.
Keir Starmer earned £360,000 in the last two years and paid £118,000 in tax, it has been revealed.
The Labour leader published his returns for 2020/21 and 2021/22 a day after Rishi Sunak became the first prime minister since David Cameron to do so.
They show that in 202/21, Starmer earned £125,695 as an MP and leader of the opposition.
He also received £21,925 in book royalties and £13 in bank interest, making a total of £147,633.
In that year, he paid £51,547 in income tax.
In 2021/22, he earned £126,154 as an MP and Labour leader, £453 in royalties, £14 in bank interest and £85,466 in capital gains after his sister sold a house they had bought together for her and her children to live in.
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He paid £43,103 in income tax, plus £23,930 in capital gains tax, making a total of £67,033.
It means that over the two years he earned a total of £359,720 and paid £118,580 to the tax man. That means his tax rate was 33%.
Sunak’s returns showed that he paid HMRC just over £1 million between 2019 and 2022.
Tax returns dating back to Sunak’s time as chancellor show that between 2019/20 and 2021/22, he received £1,006,374 in income, plus £3,760,588 in capital gains – a total of £4,766,962.
On that, he paid income tax and capital gains tax totalling £1,053,060.
A Labour source said: “While Sunak was jacking up everyone else’s tax, he was paying a tax rate of about 22% on millions of pounds of income.”
Rishi Sunak earned just under £5 million over the last three years, it has been revealed.
Tax returns dating back to his time as chancellor show that between 2019/20 and 2021/22, he received £1,006,374 in income, plus £3,760,588 in capital gains.
That makes a total of £4,766,962.
On that, he paid income tax and capital gains tax totalling £1,053,060.
A Labour source said: “So while Sunak was jacking up everyone else’s tax, he was paying a tax rate of about 22% on millions of pounds of income.”
Downing Street has been promising to release the PM’s tax returns for months, but eventually chose to do so on the same day that Boris Johnson was giving evidence to the privileges committee and MPs were voting on the Windsor Framework.
That led to suggestions that Number 10 were trying to ensure that it got less media coverage that would ordinarily have been the case.
Johnson swore on the King James Bible to tell the truth before issuing an apology and adding “hand on heart, I did not lie to the House”.
He went on: “When those statements were made, they were made in good faith and on the basis on what I honestly knew and believed at the time.”
If the committee decides Johnson did mislead MPs – and the Commons backs suspending him for 10 days or more – he could face a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
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However, there is a long process to get through before the saga potentially reaches that stage.
Kwasi Kwarteng has said what he got “wrong” in his mini-Budget that triggered market chaos and led to the downfall of Liz Truss’ government was not being “methodical” enough.
The former chancellor said his successor Jeremy Hunt had delivered a “good Budget” last week.
Hunt was appointed chancellor by Truss after she fired Kwarteng, her closest political ally, in a last ditch attempt to save her failing premiership.
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Speaking to GB News on Sunday morning, Kwarteng said Hunt had “rightly perhaps” adopted a more “cautious” approach than he had.
“What we can’t do is pretend that last October didn’t happen, last September didn’t happen,” he said.
“I don’t understand what it means to be a Conservative if you don’t believe, ultimately, in lower taxes, broadly. That’s a strategic goal.
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“There is a question about how you get there and there are different approaches.
“Now, I’d like to see things maybe done more quickly. But you do have to be methodical, you have to carry institutions with you, and I think that’s what they’re trying to do.”
He added: “That’s where I think I and Liz got it wrong. I think we should have had a more methodical and more process-driven way of getting to that strategic goal, which is lower taxes and incentivising economic activity.”
Kwarteng also acknowledged there was “too much” in his mini-Budget and it was “very bold” not to have Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts or measures on spending restraint at the same time.
He also said that suggesting more tax cuts could come in the aftermath of his statement “probably was a mistake”.
Kwarteng’s decision to tell BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that even more taxes could be cut, shortly after he axed the 45p top rate, was widely seen to have been a big factor in spooking the markets.
SNP leadership candidate Kate Forbes has said she has “full confidence” in the integrity of the bitter campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as first minister.
It came after Peter Murrell, who is Sturgeon’s husband, quit as the party’s chief executive, having served in the role for 20 years.
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Murrell said he took responsibility after misleading information was briefed to the media over SNP’s membership numbers.
Earlier this week it emerged that the party had lost 30,000 members in just over a year.
On Thursday the party said membership as of February 15 this year was 72,186, having fallen from 103,884 in 2021.
This corroborated a story in the Sunday Mail in February about the party losing 30,000 members, something it had strongly denied at the time.
Earlier this week two of the candidates seeking to replace Sturgeon, Forbes and Ash Regan, raised concerns about the integrity of the election.
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Forbes had called for an independent auditor to asses the leadership contest.
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf, widely viewed as the favourite for the top job among the party hierarchy, dismissed these as “baseless smears”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Forbes said she now did “have full confidence and trust in the process”.
The point I made around an independent auditor was to try and give as much trust and confidence to those that were voting.
“It’s fairly standard common practice when it comes to election contests for there to be that third party independent auditing.
“And I would hope that we can get to the end of this contest knowing that the decisions that SNP members are taking when they vote is the decision that they truly want when it comes to leadership of the party.”
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The leadership contest is due to conclude on March 27.
Oliver Dowden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, announced that the app would be removed from all government devices amid cybersecurity fears.
But Shapps, who is energy secretary, made it clear on his own TikTok account that he would not be closing down his own account.
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He posted a 45-second clip on TikTok from the hit moving The Wolf of Wall Street, in which Leonardo DiCaprio tells a cheering crowd “I’m not fucking leaving.”
DiCaprio’s character, Jordan Belfort, adds: “The show goes on. This is my home. They’re gonna need a wrecking ball to take me out of here.”
Shapps added: “This morning the government announced a TikTok ban on government devices. That’s sensible.
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“I’ve never used TikTok on government devices and can hereby confirm I will NOT be leaving TikTok any time soon.”
His post is a stinging rebuke to Dowden, who had earlier said: “Restricting the use of TikTok on Government devices is a prudent and proportionate step following advice from our cyber security experts.”
TikTok requires users to give permission for the app to access data stored on the device, which is then collected and stored by the company.
That gives TikTok access to a range of data on the device, including contacts, user content, and geolocation data.
Ministers are believed to be concerned about the way in which this data may be used by TikTok’s owners, the Chinese company ByteDance.
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Parliament’s TikTok account was shut down last year after MPs raised concerns over the firm’s links to China.
The US government banned TikTok last year on federal government-issued devices due to national security concerns.
Meanwhile, staff working at the European Commission have been ordered to remove the TikTok app from their phones and corporate devices.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “We are disappointed with this decision. We believe these bans have been based on fundamental misconceptions and driven by wider geopolitics, in which TikTok, and our millions of users in the UK, play no part.
“We remain committed to working with the government to address any concerns but should be judged on facts and treated equally to our competitors.
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“We have begun implementing a comprehensive plan to further protect our European user data, which includes storing UK user data in our European data centres and tightening data access controls, including third-party independent oversight of our approach.”
Jeremy Hunt has been accused of handing a huge tax cut to the rich by shaking up pension rules.
The chancellor used his first Budget to announce that high-earners will be able to plough more money into their retirement pots without having to pay more money to the taxman.
He said he was increasing the so-called annual tax free allowance from £40,000 to £60,000.
And in a major surprise, he also announced that he was going to abolish the lifetime allowance, which is currently £1 million.
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The changes are aimed at encouraging more over-50s to stay in work rather than retiring to avoid higher tax bills.
Hunt said: “These changes will stop over 80% of NHS doctors from receiving a tax charge, incentivise our most experienced and productive workers to stay in work for longer and simplify our tax system, taking thousands of people out of the complexity of pension tax.”
But Labour pointed out that the tax cut would only benefit the very wealthiest in society.
Responding to the Budget in the Commons, Keir Starmer said: “We needed a fix for doctors, but the announcement today is a huge giveaway to some of the very wealthiest.
“The only permanent tax cut in the budget is for the richest 1%. How can that possibly be a priority for this government?”
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A Labour source told HuffPost UK: “It’s a bad look for your only budget surprise to be a very very big tax break for the very very richest.”
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said: “Today the Chancellor claimed that this was a budget for growth to benefit Britain. In real terms, it’s tax cuts for the rich and powerful and little reward for workers.
“This economic system is not only broken, it’s rigged and once again workers are paying the price.”
Andrew Harrop, general secretary of the Fabian Society, said: “The chancellor did nothing to put extra money into the pockets of low and middle income households.
“Instead of acting to address the country’s unprecedented cost of living crisis, Mr Hunt instead chose a pension tax giveaway for the wealthy. That will be a bitter pill to swallow for people struggling to feed their families.”
Treasury sources insisted the tax cut was about keeping the “most experienced workers” in the labour market for longer.
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They cited figures from the Royal College of Surgeons that found 70% of respondents reduced their hours due to the government’s current pension tax rules.
Sources said the chancellor did not want the current rules to lead to “fewer doctors” in the labour market and that this was the “quickest and most effective way” of keeping them in the NHS.
