If they were honest it would be fine . But they are all bloody liars.

Most of them were taking drugs and they knew what they were doing

I spent my university grant on books , beer and tequila . I got drunk a few times and will openly admit to falling down once or twice.

Guinness shares actually fell when I graduated...

Quote from Splinter

I would find it more honest to say, 'Yes, I smoked a joint in university with some mates and enjoyed it, actually. But that was then. A passing phase on the road through life...' or words to that effect.

Boris Johnson seems to have taken a middle ground approach by 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." and "That's was when I was nineteen."

Sounds a bit like Clinton.

You're right; it would be more honest to just 'fess up. The percentage of voters who are shocked by students' experimenting with drugs surely must drop every year. As for Johnson's clintonesque, weak as water disclaimer, I marvel that one person can so perfectly emulate the worst of both Clinton and trump.

just read that Gove said a few years back that all teachers who had experimented with cocaine should be sacked.

Hope he will now resign from politics and go away for good...

I never knew that prior drug use disqualified British citizens from qualifying for the Visa waiver program with the US. Maybe candidates don’t want to tell the truth so they wouldn’t have trouble getting a Visa for travel across the pond!

Yes he's a silly arse. Thankfully it came out before he had any chance of becoming the PM.

You have to be whiter than white if you want to lead the country.

Quote from UK Man

You have to be whiter than white if you want to lead the country.

Those are the Old Rules. Now you have to be the wildest crazy on the block.

Quote from Splinter

It's a central theme to his leadership bid.

This is delicious. I was debating whether I agree 100% with your point, then watched the video and dropped all my objections.

I don’t follow British politics all that closely, but from a distance there appears to be something so very English about Mr Gove past and present.

The cheap, thin veneer of faux “proper” which, once stripped away, reveals a bumbling creature completely incapable of adequately expressing a clear thought, and covering between a new veneer, this time one of earnestness.

As if saying “deeply” with any more faux conviction could simply reach back into the past and annul the drugs retroactively.

The other striking point about this, of course, is the hypocrisy.

Of the four most recent US presidents, 2 acknowledged possession and use, and one was a major alcoholic. (And when you consider that of those 4, the only one who never abused drugs or alcohol is the current one, frankly that reads like an argument to legalize LSD).

So as regards Americans, this is not an impediment to becoming President, and already today many Americans are openly and (quasi-)legally engaged in making and selling the stuff. But Heaven forfend that a foreigner do the same thing (or did so once, as a kid, 30 years ago) - that gets you excluded for life.

It was well worth giving up the required 1.32 minutes to read and re-read.

After the first vote the plan hatched years ago among the same club tie wearers now seems to be working out as planned.

Indeed.....most front bench politicians no matter which party is in power are two faced. That's why they're politicians!!

Could it possibly ever happen that the term ‘honest politicians’ would no longer be an oxymoron? What kind of magic would be necessary?

Short answer:

It is not possible.

Long answer: It is not possible until and unless human nature changes. The reason Trump won* is because he promised to be all things to all people, and people bought it, notwithstanding the mountains of evidence - this was a very public figure - that he was a blowhard, serial liar, etc etc.

Education can change a bit of this story, but at the end of it all there are some traits prevalent in the majority of humans that guarantee that the people who end up with power will not be nice people.

You put in a nice and capable person, then the following 2 things will inevitably happen:

1) Another person will come along, not nearly as nice and/or capable, but endowed with the political mind capable of swaying (enough) people.

2) People become convinced, that the newcomer is better equipped to get things done, and cast nice/capable-but-not-political person aside.

If you want an example where Trump pulled this off decades before doing it nationwide, here’s a perfect example.

Though I used Trump as an example - he’s damn near close to the personification of the pure abstract concept - this is really about any politician, and any people.

*Where ‘won’ expressly includes ’captured enough votes to win a majority of the Electoral College’.

That he did not win the popular vote is irrelevant: it is indictment enough that he got more than 10-20% of the vote, however distributed.